AI was supposed to revolutionize customer service. Morgan Stanley’s interns aren’t buying it.

Morgan Stanley’s analysts noted that AI models should improve, helping machines to solve more customer-service questions and complaints. But they also highlighted another risk.

“In many cases technology improvement in and of itself cannot force behavioural change that is generally slow and iterative — particularly emotionally-driven complaints or trust-centric conversations,” they wrote in a note this week to investors.

This makes sense intuitively. When you have problem, especially one involving something you paid real money for, you want to be heard by a human who feels your pain and is capable of fixing the issue asap, ideally by cutting through red tape and just getting it done.

The AI reality

The AI reality is nowhere near that at the moment. Take Klarna’s AI customer-service agents.

Software engineer Gergely Orosz tried this Klarna technology out by calling up with questions.

“Underwhelming,” was his conclusion.

When he asked about something, the AI bots regurgitated information that was already available from Klara.

Anything beyond that?

“I’m boom talking with a human agent,” he wrote.