Birmingham Council's new automated phone system reportedly struggles to understand a Brummie accent.
Costing £11 million to implement, the system uses speech recognition technology.
However, local residents have had difficulty resolving issues because the software failed to recognise what they were saying, reports the Birmingham Mail.
Councillor Mike Leddy stated: "I am a proud Brummie and most people can understand me when I am talking to them.
"But I was trying for half an hour to deal with an issue for a resident. I gave up and ended up calling the strategic director to sort it out."
Residents have been requesting that the council reverts to using human operators again.
Council deputy leader Ian Ward acknowledged: "Our performance is a long way short of where it should be."
