Frequent flyers who are fed up with British Airways have been sharing their tips to get around AI customer service bots that send out impersonal, copy-and-paste replies to their complaints without ever being seen by a real person at the airline.
Last month, British Airways revealed how it was investing hundreds of millions of pounds in artificial intelligence to improve its operational reliability, but some flyers believe the money is also being used to fob them off with automated replies to their complaints.
Of course, replacing expensive customer service staff with AI technology is nothing new, and British Airways is definitely not alone in trying to get technology to deal with less serious complaints without any human involvement.
But if you want your well-crafted complaint that you spent hours working on to actually be read by a real human, some frequent flyers have developed a clever but simple hack to get around the AI bots.
Beat The AI System At Its Own Game By Using Keywords
It all comes down to how AI customer service systems read complaints and then determine whether it’s an issue that it can deal with automatically or whether the complaint is deemed serious enough to be sent to a human employee.
To do this, the bot looks for keywords or phrases that indicate that the complaint is either of a sensitive nature or too complex for a ‘copy and paste’ reply.
If you make a simple complaint about the inflight Wi-Fi not working or the quality of the food, then expect an AI response with an offer of compensation that draws directly from a standard table of goodwill gestures for these types of things.
But including certain sensitive keywords like ‘assault,’ or ‘discriminate’ could trigger the AI system to pass your complaint to a human.
Not that you should make up stories to get your complaint read. You just have to be creative in how you write your complaint.
One passenger on the frequent flyer website Flyer Talk suggested weaving in the word ‘assault’ by writing: “I found the whiff from the galley to be an assault on the senses, and I could not discriminate between the lamb tagine and the odor of a dead squirrel.”
Is It Worth It? Sometimes An AI Response Might Be Better
Just be aware that forcing the system to reroute your complaint to a human is always the best course of action. After all, the human employees also work to the same compensation guidelines as the AI bot but you’ll probably have to wait a lot longer to get a response for the same goodwill gesture to be made.
In other words, if your complaint really is simple, it might be a better idea to let the AI do the hard work, even if it does feel a little impersonal.
And be aware that trying to fool the AI customer service bot doesn’t always work, as they are prone to miscategorizing even the most serious of complaints.
American Airlines AI Customer Service Bot Goes Wrong
In 2023, a grieving mother contacted American Airlines to request a refund on a basic economy ticket that she had bought for her son before he tragically died.
The AI customer service bot decided that it could deal with the request and sent back a generic response which, in part, read: “We’re sorry your travel plans didn’t work out.”
The response didn’t acknowledge the woman’s pain and suffering and simply refused to provide a refund.
The system employed by American Airlines was codenamed ‘Fast Eve’ and was designed to kick in whenever the airline’s team of human customer service employees couldn’t keep up with the number of complaints being received.
Fast Eve was meant to filter more serious complaints to a real employee, but, just like in this case, it wasn’t always accurate.
