Chatbots and online messaging have taken over as the customer point of contact at many large organisations, making them less accessible for everyone, Citizens Advice Bureau says.

Many large businesses have ditched email communication as an option and now offer customer service through automated chatbots or Facebook Messenger.

Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) spokesperson Sacha Green says the organisation was “definitely familiar” with the challenges people face in accessing businesses and also public services due to decreasing in-person and phone accessibility and increasing reliance on chatbots and online forms.

“In our experience, the drive to digital means that some people are being left behind, shut out, and in some cases, being made invisible to processes they can no longer participate in.

“The issue is less about finding an email address for a business, and more about getting through to a person who will respond to your specific inquiry and work with you to resolve the issue.”

CAB had been running a campaign for inclusion and pushing for services to be delivered through a multichannel approach, in a way that allowed equitable access for people whether they needed to access those services in-person, by phone, or online.

Even when a phone number was available, it was not always answered quickly. Consumer NZ recently investigated the call times for businesses and government agencies.

It found when it came to time spent on hold, Hello Fresh was the speediest responder, with a 15-second wait time. 2degrees had a wait time of 54 minutes and 50 seconds. Kiwibank had a wait time of 40 minutes and Air NZ was 38 minutes.

The average wait time was about 12 minutes.

Uber’s service was the worst the watchdog encountered. When it eventually found and dialled the contact number for Uber, it was promptly hung up on by an automated inbox as the customer call centre was only available to “Diamond Riders”.

Of the 21 companies it investigated, only 11 contact numbers could be found quickly and easily.

Meanwhile, Government agency Work and Income kept Consumer’s caller waiting for more than 90 minutes.

Some departments, such as Inland Revenue, picked up the phone in less than two minutes.

Immigration NZ was the hardest agency to contact with it taking two attempts for a total hold time of more than two-and-a-half hours.

A Consumer NZ spokesperson says when people were paying for a service, the service providers had obligations under the Consumer Guarantees Act to provide those services using reasonable care and skill.

“That would include being contactable within a reasonable timeframe.”

- Brianna Mcilraith/Stuff.