Pharmacy now using AI bot to call customers

[ScaramoucheCanYouDoTheFandango]

Just read that Oushk has started using an AI bot called Scarlet to make follow up calls to customers.

I had a look at their pharmacy chat, and one customer was saying they’d received a call where the bot identified itself as Oushk and confirmed that she was a patient, before asking for her date of birth, and without first properly verifying who she was.

That sounds pretty concerning to me, especially when it was unexpected and some people prefer to keep their medication private even to their family. No one knows where their personal data is now being held and Oushk have closed down threads in their forum that were asking questions about concerns over it.

They have a live on tonight and many customers are not happy with it.

It is very disappointing from Oushk who previously lamented that their premium price was for the costs involved in providing that personal touch and extra support they provided.

There seems to me to be an obvious difference between using an AI tool to answer customer calls and attempt to handle basic enquiries or pass on to the appropriate human contact, and using one to proactively call customers for ill-defined "follow up" calls. Have customers been told or agreed to having follow up calls at all, let alone ones made by AI?

I haven't used Oushk, and it's stuff like this that means I don't think I ever would.

The first anyone heard about it was a post yesterday from a customer asking about “dodgy calls”, and Oushk confirmed that it was their new AI bot.

Chaos followed, with everyone understandably concerned about how their data was being handled and asking for details. So far, though, they’ve only offered platitudes that “everything is OK”.

But if a bot has called a customer, identified itself as Oushk, and said it’s making a patient follow-up call before even validating who it is speaking to, that surely can’t be right.

If anyone wants to opt out, they can email Oushk and ask to be opted out.
And even putting the data issues aside, who wants to pay a fortune to be spammed by a bot?

Its crazy they even think this is acceptable. I haven't heard of any other pharmacy doing this.

There was a discussion about it on the Ouhsk Circle group, where most people were saying they were unhappy about this and asking about GDPR and privacy concerns - the discussion disappeared off the main page (not sure if you can still view it if you had posted on it). I used to be a customer of theirs but they seem too focused on the wrong things right now.

Yes, saw that @Ketra , I never joined the live to see if Hira giggled her way out of it, will perhaps watch later.

Saw they closed the thread down too, obviously didn’t like the negativity.

Wow thats nuts. I wouldnt want to speak to a bot that rang me. Bad enough when you "talk" to one online but at least ai expect that.

@ScaramoucheCanYouDoTheFandango I joined late and they had already got past it (despite circle posts confirming the focus would be AI this week and foundayo next week) so the discussion was just general q&a rather than addressing the issues at that point. Maybe someone else will have watched!

they are not having a good week!

Hira Malik, registration number 2083134, was issued a 12-month warning by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) after giving a patient with anorexia nervosa weight loss drugs.

https://www.chemistanddruggist.co.uk/news/regulation/superintendent-warned-for-weight-loss-drugs-to-anorexia-patient-37YVL4QBKFHXHGK7EBXSUWBQC4/

https://files.pharmacyregulation.org/determinations/D024829/D024829.pdf