"As more customers engage on digital channels, virtual customer assistants are being implemented for handling customer requests on websites, mobile apps, consumer messaging apps and social networks," Gene Alvarez, managing vice president at Gartner, said in February.

"This is underpinned by improvements in natural-language processing, machine learning and intent-matching capabilities."

Organisations making use of virtual customer assistants have reported a reduction of up to 70 per cent in call, chat and/or email inquiries after implementing it, according to Gartner research. They also report increased customer satisfaction and a 33 per cent saving per voice engagement.

"A great virtual customer assistant offers more than just information," Alvarez said. "It should enrich the customer experience, help the customer throughout the interaction and process transactions on behalf of the customer."

The opposite appears to be the case at Telstra, with client frustration clear on its online channels.

The other issue is the chatbot appearing to crash, repeating this same message to users multiple times: "Oops… something went wrong. Can you please retype your message?"

After having to deal with the virtual assistant multiple times, some have begun asking Telstra what the exact phrase is to be transferred to a human operator straight away.

A Telstra spokesman said the telco's "number one" priority was "to deliver brilliant customer experiences".

"As with all artificial intelligence applications, Codi continues to learn with each customer interaction and will improve over time," the spokesman said.

"Customers engaging with Codi can switch to engage with a live chat agent at any stage."

Meanwhile, on Twitter, Telstra said the chatbot was "still in development".

Asked how to speak to a human via the chat, the Telstra spokesman could not provide the exact phrase, instead suggesting customers interact with human Telstra consultants by phone or in a store.

"Codi isn't meant to replace people, it's a digital self-service channel provided as a further engagement option for customers," the spokesman said. "If a customer wishes to speak to a consultant we encourage them to visit a store or call our customer service teams on 13 22 00."

The introduction of Codi was supporting "a big shift" of interactions, with Telstra's customers increasingly choosing to interact with it via its digital and self-service tools, the spokesman said.

"Codi now handles a set of simple, specific enquiries and has engaged with hundreds of thousands of customers since its launch," the spokesman said.

Telstra says that if Codi can not answer a question, customers are transferred to a live chat consultant who picks up the conversation from Codi.

However, customers question this.