ACS’s David Braue, writing in the InformationAge publication explored the Commonwealth Bank’s latest Ai move that has reduce staffing level dramatically this month. He writes…
Companies love them, customers tolerate them, and generative AI (genAI) is making them useful – but as dozens of Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) customer service staff are learning, it’s clear the worst fears about chatbots were true all along.
Some 45 Direct Banking workers have been made redundant since an AI chatbot started handling inbound customer enquiries in June, the bank has confirmed, with another 45 Customer Messaging Specialist staff – the other side of your online chats – set to follow.
Reports suggest the AI chatbots have diverted 2,000 calls per week from the bank’s contact centres, with a CBA spokesperson telling Information Age that “our investment in technology, including AI, is making it easier and faster for customers to get help.”
“By automating simple queries,” they added, “our teams can focus on more complex customer queries that need empathy and experience.”
Staff movement is inevitable during such changes as “some roles and work can change”, the spokesperson said, as executives “review the skills we need and how we’re organised to deliver the best customer experiences and outcomes.”
“Based on individual situations, many of our people have taken up the upskilling and reskilling pathways made available for them,” they said, adding that the bank was committed to “support affected employees with care, dignity, and respect.”
The Finance Sector Union (FSU) isn’t buying CBA’s reassurances, with national secretary Julia Angrisano arguing that “workers want a tech-savvy bank, but they expect to be part of the change, not replaced by it.”
Workers “want to be supported into better jobs that leverage AI,” she said, “yet rather than invest in its people, CBA are simply discarding Australians.… [CEO Matt Comyn’s] carefully curated commitment to policy reform just looks like hollow PR.”
AI has some hard truths for workers
Confirmation of the cuts comes just months after an Australian Financial Review report that last September said the bank was testing a genAI chatbot, called Hey CommBank, that would eventually replace many of the bank’s 2,400 contact centre staff.
Asked about those reports at the company’s 2024 annual general meeting the next month, Comyn dismissed the report as “perhaps… a little ahead of itself.”
“We are very focused on being able to improve the customer experience,” he said, suggesting AI chatbots might be most useful in managing surges in customer enquiries during a mass fraud or other “times of particular concern.”
“Whilst there is certainly potential with AI,” he said, “it will take some time before we’ll be confident that we can control for all the risks, and be able to manage that safely at scale…. It’s an important policy area and an area that we are engaging with our regulators.”
“There is a human cost to this,” Angrisano said. “You can’t just replace frontline jobs with a voice bot and expect the same service for customers.” [Excite Editor: melding being the solution!]
The benefits are so good that AI adopters are hastening the transition.
So need help developing an ai base chatbot for external customers or internal staff to answer questions, divert resrouces to more valable work in your business – Excite Labs is here!
