I found it interesting reading about the idea that AI has turned Britain into a nation of “super complainers”. Councils, schools and police forces are reporting a surge in AI-drafted complaints – longer, more legalistic and often inaccurate. I’m also hearing this more often from the CEOs and service leaders I speak with.
And it isn’t only organisations feeling the strain: MPs and their staffers are increasingly having to sift through often lengthy and confusing letters written at least in part by AI. For many constituents, an MP is the last resort when an organisation hasn’t listened, so the problem just moves up the chain.
But are we really a nation of “super complainers” – or have too many organisations simply made themselves hard to reach? Research by Citizens Advice shows chatbots used by essential service providers left over half of users losing time, feeling stressed or waiting longer for a fix. If you expect to feel like that when raising a legitimate complaint – or, worse still, expect it to fall on deaf ears – outsourcing the effort is understandable.
There are other perfectly valid reasons to use AI to help draft a letter of complaint. For vulnerable or neurodivergent customers, or anyone who struggles to find the right words, it can genuinely help ensure their voice is heard – as the Financial Ombudsman Service recognises.
A changing playing field
Nevertheless, the rise in AI-written customer correspondence and complaints poses real challenges for businesses – and I sympathise with the teams navigating this shift.
In banking, for example, up to a third of submissions to banks sampled by the ombudsman appeared to be AI-generated or heavily assisted. They can cite laws and rulings that don’t exist and bury the real issues – and every hour spent untangling that is an hour another customer is left waiting.
As customers, of course, we have a responsibility in all this too. AI isn’t a licence to complain for the sake of it, just because it’s now quicker and easier to do so. We all need to check the facts, stick to our own circumstances when things go wrong, and remember that we want to move things on and achieve a better outcome – not just a short-term fix.
That said, AI is empowering consumers and no doubt changing the playing field for businesses. Those that respond by making themselves harder to reach will only erode trust and may make customers more likely to raise complaints – and resort to AI when doing so.
Nor, for me, is the answer simply to fight AI with more AI, which risks escalating issues and compounding the problem, leaving both customers and organisations no closer to a resolution.
Technology to sort, people to resolve
Ultimately, organisations must respond effectively to complaints, whatever form they take. Our latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index shows complaint handling is improving, but it remains the lowest-scoring dimension of customer satisfaction and has the widest gap between the best and the rest. That matters, because how a complaint is handled can make or break a customer’s trust.
AI can help by summarising complaints, identifying underlying issues, categorising and prioritising cases, and quickly routing them to the right team. This should mean that urgent problems and vulnerable customers don’t get lost in the system.
But without human oversight and judgement, AI won’t improve things for customers or organisations. Understanding context, showing empathy and deciding what is fair are fundamentally human skills. Tellingly, the Financial Ombudsman itself is now picking up the phone more often to get to the heart of disputes.
Technology should be used to sort, route and analyse, and people to consider, contextualise and resolve. Make it easy to reach a person and treat every complaint, however it’s written, as insight into what might need fixing. Get this right, and customers won’t feel the need to resort to AI to be heard.
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