All I wanted to do this morning was to update my IBAN for my AA membership debit order.
Sounds easy enough, right?
Wrong.
What should’ve taken five minutes turned into a two-hour exercise in frustration, circular clicks, and chatbot déjà vu.
And it left me wondering: How did we get here? When did something so basic become so unnecessarily difficult?
Join me on the ride and see for yourself.
The Search for a Contact Point
I opened the AA website, optimistic and ready to sort things out. Right on the homepage were three promising little buttons: Call Us, Email Us, and Help. Nice and clear, or so I thought.
- The Call Us button? Didn’t work.
- Email Us? Dead end.
- Help? More like help yourself to a rabbit hole of unhelpful articles.
I clicked. I read. I backtracked. I tried the chatbot. I got the same canned loop of responses over and over like it was stuck in a Groundhog Day script.
Two hours later, I was no closer to changing my IBAN. No contact details. No working support. Just me, a very stubborn chatbot, and a rising sense of digital despair.
Where Automation Goes Wrong
Let’s be clear: I’m not against automation. When it’s done right, it’s fantastic. But here’s the kicker—it must be grounded in a solid understanding of the customer journey and use cases. Otherwise, it’s just putting lipstick on a pig.
Automating a bad process doesn’t make it better. It makes it faster—faster at frustrating customers, losing trust, and burning loyalty.
In my case, someone somewhere probably said, “Let’s digitize customer service!” without first asking, “What do customers actually need to do?” and “Where are the pain points in their journey?”
Spoiler alert: one of those pain points is clearly changing banking details.
The Forgotten Basics
What’s most infuriating is that this wasn’t some complex, niche request. Updating a payment method is fundamental—a basic, repeatable, high-frequency task. If that’s not easy, what is?
And don’t get me started on the lack of a human fallback. Automation should support people, not replace them entirely—especially when things go off-script. Customers want self-service when it works, and human help when it doesn’t. Not being able to reach someone at all? That’s a failure, not a feature.
Lessons for Business and Tech Teams
Here’s the moral of the story for businesses racing to automate:
- Map the real customer journey before you build anything.
- Identify the top use cases—the stuff people actually try to do every day.
- Test it with real users. If people can’t complete a basic task without rage-clicking, go back to the drawing board.
- Always provide an escape hatch. Chatbots and help centres are great, but when they fail, a human should be reachable—easily.
Final Thoughts
Customer experience is everything. It’s not just about shiny buttons and chat interfaces. It’s about outcomes. If your customer walks away after two hours still unable to complete a basic task, something’s seriously broken.
And no amount of automation can fix a broken experience—unless you take the time to understand what your customers actually need.
Until then, I’ll keep trying to change my IBAN. Wish me luck. I might need it. ..Or maybe cancelling my membership will be quicker and less frustrating ?…
