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You can now log and follow up on faults with the Eskom chatbot, Alfred

On the back of some bad news from Eskom on Thursday with loadshedding having been implemented in the evening here’s some good news.

The utility has announced that it has enhanced its MyEskom app and introduced a chatbot that can help to deal with certain customer queries.

The MyEskom app improvements included the ability to report a fault, check your balance and even submit your meter readings right through the app. That last feature is rather interesting for us as we’ve realised how often Eskom reads meters now that we’re working from home.

That chatbot is accessible through the app but Eskom has also launched a website specifically for the chatbot that you can access here.

In terms of functionality the bot, or Alfred as Eskom has christened it, is limited to being able to report faults, check-up on previously reported faults and answer FAQs.

How good is it? Well from a few interactions, not all that good.

For example, we asked “What is a megawatt hour?” and we received the response, “The total amount owing is shown on the summary page in the TOTAL AMOUNT DUE block”. In contrast when we asked “how much does electricity cost” we were told “A kWh is what is used to measure electricity. A kWh is the electricity used by, for example, a 100W bulb burning for 10 hours uses 1 kWh. It is the unit used to measure and charge for electricity consumed on your electricity bill.”

There is clearly some work to do here then, but Eskom has said that this is part of an ongoing process, “to add fast, online and interactive tools to improve our service to our customers”.

The MyEskom app is available to download for free for both iOS and Android.

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