Another day, another crappy Chatbot (this time, from an Airline)

In case you thought that things are pretty advanced out there, here's another live example of how ridiculously poor things still are, mid-way through 2025.

Alex Mead knows a thing or two about CX (just check his LinkedIn and witness how many senior CX roles he's had).

He's trying to do one simple thing with an airline booking and yet... you've guessed it, the Conversational AI is clueless and everything is relying on humans bashing keyboards.

He detailed the challenge on his LinkedIn post and helpfully posted the above screenshot.

"Your current position is more than 12."

What does that even mean?

13?

50?

Or is it the equivalent of the system trying to figure out how many "r"s there are in Strawberry?

It's embarrassing, it really is.

This is the height of sophistication for one of the world's global airlines.

Alex himself comments, "Why are so many airlines still stuck in the dark ages ?!"

I hear you Alex.

Here's what he's trying to do:

1 - I’m having to get in touch as the option to add my high-tier partner FF number is offered, but does NOT work…

Process failure.

Someone, somewhere at the airline, screwed things up or, more likely, couldn't be bothered to make the process work for adding partner frequent flier details to the booking.

Who is the airline?

Well, it's probably not Air Canada, right? ;-)

Airline held liable for its chatbot giving passenger bad advice - what this means for travellers

When Air Canada’s chatbot gave incorrect information to a traveller, the airline argued its chatbot is “responsible for its own actions”.

BBCMaria Yagoda

Alex describes them thus:

This is a very large successful airline group, but their CSX is similar to most of their competitors, also in dire need of customer service experience transformation…

Ah dear.

Alex also pointed this out:

This is such an easy situation for me to just send a message and get a response either immediately through AI, or later today by an agent response.

Yup. It would have been perfectly fine if it was, for example, a WhatsApp.

You should be able to send the message and then wait for an update in due course – it's not, as Alex points out, a time sensitive issue.

Ah dear.

Anyway Alex, I hope you got a resolution eventually!