Please Hold While Your Bot Misunderstands You

"Sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now," sang the American sweetheart Taylor Swift in 2017.

Neither, apparently, can customer support.

In 2026, getting hold of an actual human being feels like unlocking secret level in a video game. Before you can speak to a person, you must first survive a gauntlet of AI assistants who have been spoon-fed with automated menu responses and fake reassurances that make a white lie look like a noob.

Ask why your order is delayed, explain why you have been charged twice for your subscription, or simply wanting a human customer support agent to solve your issue, the bot will cheerfully suggest automated menu options that take you to a different window where perhaps a different version of the same bot is waiting to make you feel like a castaway firing distress signals into the void.

A few weeks ago, I decided to rent furniture and appliances for my house. I was interested particularly in getting a dishwasher- almost for a trial period of 6 months to persuade my granny to retire from her decades-long commitment to washing her plates, bowls and spoon by hand. The naive-me thought a diplomatic intervention would be the perfect way to make her accustomed to it before we get a brand new one that stays with us forever. Worse, I would have to return it because technology speaks volumes about human laziness.

So, after thorough-research, I downloaded a rental company's app that's is ranked amongst the best in the country for being renter-friendly. The app agent Anjali had answers to every question I could think of before making a purchase. How does renting work? What happens when I want to return it? What about maintenance and servicing costs? How long for delivery?

Every FAQ was met with a prompt, polished response. The future, I thought, had finally arrived. Renting an appliance was now as frictionless as ordering dinner. Then the calendar slipped days past the delivery date and time and suddenly, I had a question the app wasn't prepared for: where, exactly, was my dishwasher?, Connect me to an agent...connect me to an agent asap... connect me to a human agent right now... I want to speak to your customer care agent please!

Every time I wanted to connect with an agent, my super-bot Anjali gatekept it. She redirected me to FAQs, automated messages about her efficiency, her request to trust her with my queries. It was then that it dawned on me that AI-anything can only pass on information to me. But here I was looking for answers that only a human being could give me.

Ironically, for some years now, it has been hammered into our brains that AI will replace us. That machines will soon become sentient enough to outperform humans at everything-- from writing emails to diagnosing diseases.

Yet, there I was in front of The Great Wall of Bots. Defeated by a customer-service bot incapable of telling me when a dishwasher would arrive, if at all.

A 2025 Gartner survey found that while companies are investing heavily in AI-powered self-service, only 35 per cent of customers who last resolved an issue over the phone said they'd be willing to switch to a generative AI assistant. While another survey by Metrigy conducted in 2026 found that 85 per cent of consumers still prefer interacting with a human rather than an AI agent for customer service.

Safe to say there is some faith left in humanity before the bots officially take over. Efficiency doesn't mean effectiveness, after all. You might doing things right, but are you doing the right thing?

Currently, customer-service bots occupy the front of line customer service but at the same time it provokes such a specific kind of frustration. They make one feel unheard, pretends to resolve problems it doesn't understand and traps one in the infinite loop of FAQ based answers. Contextual memory? What's that?

A chatbot can greet you warmly, ask what it can help you with and thank you for the patience (which being placed on hold would really test but at least, it was honest) only to proceed to misunderstand you with an astonishing consistency.

Eventually, my dishwasher did arrive. However, its presence has become a philosophical question around the ideas we are sold about the promise of convenience. Afterall, as long as technology is here to serve you, it's a good servant but can be a bad master.