Anastasia Ioseliani previously worked at a UK regulated fintech, where she progressed into customer experience management and worked directly with AI-supported customer operations. In this opinion piece she draws on that experience, without reference to any confidential company or customer information, to argue that the more important question is when AI should stop and escalate. The views are her own.

The customer’s message looked simple enough. They could not make a payment. For an automated support system, this is exactly the kind of query that seems easy to handle. Identify the topic, locate the relevant information, generate the response and move on.

But anyone who has worked in regulated customer support knows that a short message can contain much more than a short question. Why can’t the customer make the payment? Have they lost their job? Are they dealing with a bereavement? Is someone else controlling their finances? Are they confused about what they owe, or are they telling us that they simply cannot afford it?

The technical answer may be easy. The correct response may not be. That difference is where I think much of the conversation around AI in customer service is still missing the point.

Companies are understandably focused on what AI can answer. In regulated industries, we should be paying just as much attention to what it should refuse to answer.

AI has obvious value in customer support. A large percentage of customer enquiries are repetitive. Customers want to know where to find something, why a transaction is pending, how a process works or what they need to do next.

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