Evidence record 13775 · automatically gathered

No, Centrica, customers don’t prefer bots to humans | Letter

Charles MacKinnon disagrees with the British Gas owner’s justification for cutting 1,300 jobs According to Centrica’s boss, Chris O’Shea, most people using British Gas prefer to talk to a chatbot rather than a person ( Customers prefer AI chatbots, says British Gas owner as 1,300 call centre and back office jobs axed, 23 July ). He says that 90% of his customers prefer to use digital channels than speak to a person in the first instance, and that the number of customer calls has fallen by 20%. W

Record details

Published: 27 July 2026
Source: The Guardian
Category: News
Topics: Jobs & economy
Retrieved: 28 July 2026

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ethics.ai (27 July 2026), “No, Centrica, customers don’t prefer bots to humans | Letter,” evidence record 13775, https://ethics.ai/record/13775 (originally published by The Guardian).

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