Here's how very.co.uk achieves 100% Chatbot containment

I've long been a fan of very.co.uk for buying items like iPads, iPhones and so on, simply because you can effortlessly spread the cost of them – and, if I'm a little blunt, it's a useful way of encouraging my wife to support purchases that aren't necessarily critical. Like the latest iPad. Explanations like, "It's ok, it's... er... it's only £90 a month, you see," tend to work better than, "I'm blowing another £1,400 on an iPhone I don't actually need."

But I digress.

I had a question for the very.co.uk customer team today and thought I'd try out their chatbot, again.

In the past it's been 105% useless. I thought I'd check again.

Yeah.

Here's how the team there are able to achieve total 100% containment of my enquiry.... by simply bouncing it... and then asking me to rate the experience out of 5.

I kid ye not.

Is this, dear reader, what passes for Customer Service Excellence in 2026?

Come with me on the journey... first, let's get things moving...

I opted to type "chat to human".

The system tried to categorise me into some options but, no, I wanted to chat to an advisor... as is indicated in the text. So I selected that.

Ah hah here we go... success? "NOw let's get you in touch with someone that can help..."

I just had to choose from some 'reasons'. I selected 'other reason'.

Brilliant... I think...

And...

Oh.

So the 'getting in touch with a human' is actually 'please phone us'.

This was at about 5pm earlier today so the contact centre was operational according to those times.

As the youngsters used to say, "I can't even..."

Following it with an immediate NPS survey... well, you can imagine what number I selected.

I remain a fan of very.co.uk but goodness me, come on team! Visit the marketplace and find a vendor that can help you with some better Conversational AI.