There are moments when you’re already juggling more than enough.
I’m in the middle of a call with my solicitor. The sale of our house is dragging on. The buyers are threatening to pull out because of delays. Nothing I’ve done. Just solicitors, being solicitors.
Outside, I’m trying to lay a new lawn before my wife’s 50th birthday BBQ. A lorry full of topsoil is due to arrive.
The phone rings.
It’s the delivery driver.
He can’t find the house.
Every time the phone rings, the dogs bark. I have no idea why. They just do. So now I’m trying to direct a lost driver while calming two barking dogs before getting back to my solicitor.
The phone rings again.
American Express.
I sigh.
“I’d better take this.”
A few days earlier they’d emailed asking for bank statements to confirm my income and had blocked my card while they reviewed my account. Fair enough. I assumed this was about that.
I answered.
“Can you make this quick? I’m on an important call. I know you’ve blocked my card.”
“This is going to take at least five minutes.”
“Can you call me back?”
“No, we cannot call you back.”
I paused.
“But… you just called me.”
“We cannot call you back.”
“I’m not going to sit in a queue waiting for someone to answer.”
“We cannot call you back.”
So I hung up.
Back to the solicitor.
A few minutes later an email arrived from American Express asking me to contact them.
Once the meeting finished I decided I’d better get it sorted.
I called.
The automated system recognised my card immediately from the phone number I was calling on.
Someone answered.
“How can I help?”
“I’m calling because you’ve blocked my card. You asked for some documents, then you called me, but I couldn’t take the call.”
“Let me check your account, sir.”
About forty seconds passed.
“Yes. The bank statements you sent weren’t continuous. We need the statement covering 5th April to 5th May.”
“Oh.”
I opened the originals I’d emailed.
He was right.
I’d accidentally attached the wrong statement.
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll download the correct one and reply to the original email.”
“Yes please. Once we receive it we can complete the review.”
“Thank you.”
I logged into my bank.
Downloaded the missing statement.
Emailed it.
Done.
Sigh.
The whole exchange left me wondering what had actually happened.
This wasn’t really a security problem.
It wasn’t a customer service problem either.
It was a behaviour problem.
The system knew my phone number.
It knew my email address.
It knew exactly which document was missing.
It knew enough to call me.
It knew enough to email me.
Yet somehow nobody was allowed to simply say:
“You accidentally attached the wrong bank statement. Could you send us the one covering 5th April to 5th May?”
At what point did that become classified information?
I’m all for security.
Financial institutions should have strong controls.
But security should protect the customer, not make it harder to solve a simple problem.
Somewhere, policy became detached from purpose.
This is where I think AI can genuinely improve customer service.
Not because it can replace people.
Because it can understand intent.
Imagine the same situation with an intelligent workflow.
The incoming bank statements are checked automatically.
The system notices that one month is missing.
It drafts an email:
Thanks for sending your documents. It looks like the statement covering 5th April to 5th May wasn’t included. Could you reply to this email with that statement so we can complete your review?
A human reviews the draft.
Clicks Send.
I receive it after my meeting.
I attach the statement.
The review continues.
Nobody is stressed.
Nobody sits in a call queue.
Nobody’s afternoon is interrupted because a process insisted on following its script.
People often ask where AI will make the biggest difference.
They imagine robots replacing jobs or fully autonomous agents making complex decisions.
I think the biggest gains will be much smaller.
Thousands of moments where systems stop blindly enforcing procedure and start understanding purpose.
Technology has become very good at following rules.
The next generation of systems needs to understand why those rules exist in the first place.
Because sometimes the most revealing question in the whole interaction is also the simplest.
“But you just called me.”