BT Share Chat (BT.A)

"How is AI going to help ? with nobody to take the call. It’s just a filter and buffer to eventually pass on to a real person"

You'll never be able to replace real people completely, but AI will reduce back office staff dramatically, leaving a core of technically able operators who'll have higher access to systems, technically they'd be somewhere between the current call centre basic operator, and Network operations Engineers. My guess is you could reduce call centre staffing by a significant amount, maybe 75%, over a number of years .
Anyone remember the early attempts at speech recognition? It was useless, probably 50% accurate on a good day, and that was after you'd trained the application to recognise your voice, if you had a cold forget it. Nowaday's look at speech recognition, you can ask Alexa about most things, the app will recognise the question, whoever is asking, so highly technical question like "Why does 5h1t stink" can finally be answered.
What could you do with AI? While we're still on PSTN, AI could ask questions, make line tests, raise a fault, and assign a priority dependent on SLA's, etc; It could also decide to pass customers onto dedicated teams dependant on pre-programmed criteria.
Once PSTN is switched off, and everyone's on Passive Optical Networks, faults will become more apparent as multiple customers will be affected per OLT, with the diagnostics within the Exchange OLT's raising alarms immediatly; Should the operators decide to implement it, AI could be used to monitor and filter alarms and immediately email affected users dependant on the severity of the alarms, as well as giving status/progress updates; The reason i suggested that customers might be emailed dependant on the "severity of the alarms", is that errors and intermittent faults might not fall within SLA's warranting immediate action, so customers wouldn't need updating unless Fault resolution requires extensive downtime.
After many teething problems, AI wont just reduce customer facing staff, but it'll likely reduce the number of jobs in Network Operations too; You have Network Operations Engineers monitoring Alarm screens 24 hours a day, the alarms will be assigned a priority, and the higher priority alarms will be the ones attracting the attention of the Engineers; You also have thousands of minor alarms fleeting through, that'll be ignored unless there's a customer complaint, which will then be investigated under a customer raised fault; AI could monitor every alarm, collate them automatically, and change the priority of persistant intermittent alarms, then raise a fault to be processed by the back office operators, or assigned straight out to the Field Engineers.
I repeat what i said at the beginning of this post, "You'll never be able to replace real people completely, but AI will reduce back office staff dramatically".

I have for years been a quad play BT consumer
Mobile
Land Line
Broad Band
BT TV - BTSport.
My contract expires in November and I will then be switching to PlusNet or similar (not talk talk ????).
Unless you switch even renegotiation is costly with 3.9% plus CPI
my current contract includes a landline I never use as it is 40p to even connect a call.
I will miss BT mobile as it has been brilliant but with Broad band it becomes expensive.
Will be sad to leave but feel I am being mugged with each monthly direct debit.
Strangely when I recently inquired about renegotiation the ‘colleague’ on the call had no idea what Quad Play was.

Strikes never help shares but BT held up well today and Uefa until 2027 will help. People I know who have renewed with BT were given similar priced contracts to their existing ones but the new ones had inflationary price clauses built in where the price for renewal was quoted about the same but it can go up through the year based on a review date whereby inflation plus a foxed percentage increases the bill. That should help them weather the storm and meet increased wage demands to avert any strikes.

I worked for Global till took redundancy this year 2022 - I kid thee not in the last 3 years there was over 100 of us working from home doing absolutely nothing a few calls a day all on over £30,000 a year some on 40k and it’s still going on today! Scandalous it is - BT Global were promoting people to higher grades even tho there was no job there. Better workplace weeded a lot out but it was frantic, people trying to secure jobs elsewhere as they knew they wouldn’t get the same money away from BT. New office in Snow hill Birmingham but no one goes all WFH. On 30 to 40 k -Tell people to go into the office 5 days a week and watch them leave in droves especially in BT Global. If Philip Jansen wants to reduce head count after this strike - tell them all to go into the office 5 days a week.

The first thing they need to do is to weed out the FAKE- sick, lame and lazy then pay the genuine hard workers a descent wage.

This will be a good test for bt to see exactly what staff they need and how many they can do without

*picks out

NDNIC00,

hi, yes ..safe for now ... but ...AI is developing at a rapid rate .... in 3-5 years it will be a different ball game I suspect ...in fact BT are crying out for AI developers and want the Government to create more training courses

I saw they have cameras now with AI inside that can film a sports event. The AI can track the players etc with no camera operator, no director, no Outside Broadcast Van...and they then send the images directly to the Cloud for editing....the AI automatically pics out the best bits

“ those call centres better watch out...Artificial Intelligence is gonna replace you, the more expensive and fussy you get ... AI doesn't get flu or COVID either ! “
There was a program on TV last night, 5 I think, AI is not all it seems to be, it’s easy to confuse so it puts you through to a REAL person quicker. AI is used on online chat and phone to assist in call directing and in the end sends around 90% of contact to a real person to resolve the issue.
How is AI going to help ? with nobody to take the call. It’s just a filter and buffer to eventually pass on to a real person…

Reduced the costs (which I presume will be shared with Warner Bros. Discover), whilst securing 187 out of 204 games. Sounds like a good deal to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jul/01/amazon-and-bbc-break-bt-stranglehold-on-champions-league-football

Larry,
My BT package is thus- broadband, landline with calls package, and two mobiles 30GB each. £81
plusnet only difference is 25GB / per mobile. Quoted 18 months at £33 rising to £53 at end of contract.

"So bad payrise across the board. Bonuses were sub-par and no share plans this year, yet PJ gets over 3mil? Thats fair right, no wonder morale is an all time low."

Not sure what part of BT you work in, unless Global, but the BT scorecard for bonus was 100%. Most people I know got their OTB (some more, and some less based on their personal performance).

So given the current climate, and the fact that not all employers are giving payrises (my wife hasn't had one) - the 4% (for a career level E) and 10% OTB is not to be sniffed at.

Would I like a 10% inflation matching payrise - hell yeah, but we need to be realistic.

those call centres better watch out...Artificial Intelligence is gonna replace you, the more expensive and fussy you get ... AI doesn't get flu or COVID either !

As a BT employee "manager/professional" grade myself, I don't need the same % increase as the Team Members. Also don't forget that the manager/professional grade typically get a 10% OTB as well on top.

You mean. other than the fact PJ banked over 3mil in bonuses and shares, of which none of the non executive levels got this year (yourshare). So bad payrise across the board. Bonuses were sub-par and no share plans this year, yet PJ gets over 3mil? Thats fair right, no wonder morale is an all time low.

'5% of £22k is less than 3% of £45k'

If you have team members that are on 22k then surely it would be the set £1500 they were getting, so they would be getting 6.8% unless they were also classed as managers. There are a lot of people within BT that aren't managers but are classed as managers and aren't on great wages but are then screwed over by the us and them approach being used by BT.

"Just shows though doesn't it. How useless Prospect are, mangers got awarded 2.5-3% pay rise and were told to accept it or get nothing, Prospect didn't bat an eyelid or fight.
OR and call centres team member grades get offered 5% which I agree is not enough, but at least they have the power to do something about it. No wonder so many are leaving Prospect, all talk but do F all"

5% of £22k is less than 3% of £45k.

As a BT employee "manager/professional" grade myself, I don't need the same % increase as the Team Members. Also don't forget that the manager/professional grade typically get a 10% OTB as well on top.

Bertie, I have Halo, BT Sport and Sky all for less than £81, granted I have to give all the 18 month call to maintain best price, so not sure how the £81 monthly price stacks up, especially against Plusnet where you say it’s priced at £33 and on the website costs £24.99 for unlimited fibre extra, the priciest service of the 3 services.

"Plusnet £33 for 18 months, £53 there after. Sure beats the hell out of BT at £81 for same service."

You do realise that BT own Plusnet...

I have to agree about Prospect the last I saw from them was 28th April

Yup, absolute waste of time, and they wonder why no one really wants to join. They just roll over, year after year. Not enough power, even if they balloted, they have like 300 members from BT, and whats going to happen if 300 managers go on strike for 1-2 days? My guess, nothing major.

lol guess who owns Plusnet

the reason I have stayed with BT is because they have opened/ returned call centres to the UK. The very centres now voting to strike.

P03C, And that is why OFCOM are trying to separate BT and Openreach.
Plusnet £33 for 18 months, £53 there after. Sure beats the hell out of BT at £81 for same service.

Berty you forget that all other isp s apart from virgin are BT customers. Even virgin use BT for parts of their network so no matter who you move to you will still be a BT customer directly or indirectly.

I have to agree about Prospect the last I saw from them was 28th April
“BT has said individual awards are ‘discretionary’ so not all members are guaranteed a pay rise. With the award worth 3-4% at a time that CPI inflation is 7% and due to rise, we cannot recommend this pay award to our members in BT.”

Then silence, as has been mentioned this is after a 2 year pay freeze for any engineer classed as a Manager (internal IT Staff)