Meet 'Josie': ASB Bank's crappy 'chat assistant'

Within their on-line banking ASB Bank have replaced a private 'email like' messaging system (i.e. a proper multi-line message) with a shitty chat, probably AI powered, 'pop-up' assistant called 'Josie'.

I wrote the bold text response below (the italic is post only further info) in response to a survey that arrived soon after trying 'Josie the ASB Chatbot'.

I was trying to resolve a change the bank had made to my Internet/App banking. A shared access account had disappeared off my dashboard, with no way for me to restore it.

It's awful

Satisfaction with ASB On-line Support (Josie the Chatbot): 0 (on a scale of 0–10)

Why did you give that rating? It's awful. When it can't answer (driven by preset prompts) and asks you for more information there is a one line about 40-character long window to type into.
Type more than that and it just scrolls off the screen. Want to enter more than one long line, no way. It looks like a separate pop-up but is in fact locked to the front page.
Should you need to check something in an account, surely not an uncommon activity in a banking site, it resets. (It goes back to the start with no evidence of your half-written input, or even the prior conversation which got to that point).
Enter an account number (after it asks you what account) and it masks it from both you and the poor human who ends up dealing with it after the chatbot gives up. By 'poor' I mean 'suffering', their response was awesome: prompt, professional and helpful.

This is the interface you get for any query, one short line:

'Just useless'

In other AI 'assistant' news, I'm glad I'll never use Burger King's drive through. *

‘Just useless’: What it’s like working with Burger King’s AI assistant

‘It was brought in to help speed up service, but it has done the complete opposite.’

The SpinoffAlex Casey

* I rarely get fast-food and never use the drive through. In my experience you'll get better service—both faster and more personal—by parking and walking into any vendor than their drive through offers. My most amusing fast-food drive through experience was post-covid (with few other alternatives) at KFC Lower Hutt. See the last heading "Then hunger won..." in this cycling post.