Kathriona Devereux: Arrrrrgh! I just want customer service with the human touch
“I’m sorry I cannot connect you unless you are an account holder. Please input your account number and PIN to proceed.”
“I don’t have an account. Please put me through to a human customer service agent.”
“I’m sorry. I did not understand you. How can I help you?”
“Please, for the love of God, put me through to a human being before I lose my mind.”
“Hold on. Connecting you now.”
As if January wasn’t grim enough, I somehow spent most of it navigating the labyrinthine customer ‘service’ systems of phone, internet and delivery companies.
In accordance with the universal rule that bad things arrive in threes, I’ve been dealing daily with a company about getting a landline installed in my house, a company to switch my business broadband, and a company to get an errant package delivered.
I fell into the Bermuda triangle of incompetent AI chatbots, disempowered customer service agents, and overworked employees navigating digital systems that don’t talk to each other.
Every day, I listened to soulless hold music, enunciated my predicament slowly, and repeatedly typed 17-digit reference numbers into my touchscreen. “I’m sorry I do not recognise this number, please enter your number starting with one, double zero.”
“What! My number starts with three 7s!”
Then, finally, you are connected to a real person who must deal with this wound-up borderline lunatic and attempt to unravel your problem and crankiness.
Inevitably, this human being apologises for the failed delivery/connection/service and I say: “I’m sorry I sound so annoyed. I know it’s not your fault, but I’ve been going around in circles with that stupid chatbot you have on your phone.”
“I’m sorry about that, madam, we have got several complaints about that service. How can I help you now?”
The frustrations of interacting with digital systems that can’t capture the complexity of how things go wrong are nothing new. But this emerging era of ‘AI chatbots’, wilfully designed to stop you speaking to a real person while pretending to be one, makes everything worse.
The chatbot from the delivery company is the worst, in my opinion.
A patronisingly friendly fake female voice - “I just need to collect some details... What’s your item’s shipment number… I’m just looking that up...” she says brightly, as if she’s actually scrolling through a spreadsheet.
It is particularly galling because this is the tenth phone call I’ve made, and she hasn’t helped me yet.
I’ll spare you the excruciatingly boring details. Eventually, the broadband was upgraded, the landline is coming (allegedly), but I was still waiting delivery of my package.
The short version: it wasn’t delivered because of a supposedly incorrect address. The address was fine. My phone number wasn’t. So, they couldn’t ring me to correct an address that didn’t need correcting.
In the end, I had to push the ‘Can you please put me through to your supervisor?’ button.
“I’ve been going around in circles for the last week. Issuing another ‘ticket’ is not going to fix anything. I’ve given my address. I’ve worked from home for five days waiting for a parcel that never comes. I need to speak to a supervisor who can rectify this situation so I can get on with the rest of my life.”
On comes an apologetic supervisor. A soft UK Midlands accent, full of sympathy. I ask him to ring the depot to speak to a person who can physically hold the package and put it in a van for delivery. The supervisor said he’d ring me back in ten minutes. I was sceptical, but he did. With the unfortunate news that he, too, couldn’t get through to the depot.
This could be an irredeemably frustrating story of corporate ineptitude if it wasn’t for the intervention of one shining employee - Alex. After days of exasperation, I got an email from Alex, at the depot, who knew I’d been trying to get my parcel delivered and assured me it would go out the next day and this sorry chapter of my life would be over.
“Oh God bless you, Alex,” I whispered. “At last, a saviour for our time.”
Next morning, I logged onto the tracking website with great anticipation and, hang on a minute, the tracking information looked exactly as it had done for the past week.
I emailed my new friend Alex who assured me not to panic, the delivery vans hadn’t left yet. It was only 09.05am. My package was definitely going out today.
Later, a happy chappy from northern England rang, informing me to expect a delivery imminently. Again, I worked from home for the whole day.At 5pm, I got a phone call from Alex. Bad news. The driver had returned and my package was still in the van. I laughed out loud.
Alex apologised profusely and said he had just finished work, and he would deliver the package to my house himself because he recognised the ludicrousness of the situation.
So fair play to Alex, a functional, problem-solving human who saved the day in the end.
My aunt is currently embroiled in her own digital trench warfare (I’m providing some digital care-giving backup, and I know she is not alone.
In the end, my saga was resolved not by artificial intelligence, not by an automated ticket, not by a ‘virtual assistant’ - but by Alex. A person with agency, common sense, and the ability to recognise when something had become absurd.
It turns out the future of customer service isn’t more sophisticated robots.
It’s more Alexes.
And perhaps the radical act, in 2026, is simply refusing to rage against machines and insisting, politely but persistently, on speaking to another human being.
App?
