13/08/2026
Octopus Energy's AI now writes customer emails. It scores better than the humans do. And it handles four per cent of the post.
All three of those things are true at once, and the third one is the interesting one.
The trial results went out on 7 July. Arlo, the AI assistant, scored 76% customer satisfaction against 72% for human advisors on comparable responses. Warm coverage, good numbers, and a figure tucked into the third bullet that almost nobody picked up: around 8,000 emails a week, roughly 4% of what Octopus receives in the UK.
Four per cent, at arguably the sharpest consumer technology operation in British energy. Over in banking, NatWest has 19 million customers and had its agentic assistant in front of 25,000 of them by the end of March.
Neither of those is a failure. Both are being reported as one.
Our new piece works through why AI transformed software engineering and stalled in customer service, why that has very little to do with how clever the models are, and what changed for anyone serving EU customers when Article 50 of the EU AI Act became enforceable on 2 August.
Three things worth doing about it this week. One of them will cost you a fortnight of arguments with legal.
Take a look at our full blog post: https://amven.co.uk/index.php/2026/08/13/four-per-cent-of-the-emails-why-the-ai-customer-service-revolution-looks-so-slow/
