Call center workers say their AI assistants create more problems than they solve

[midian182]

Why it matters: Stories about AI's capabilities being overhyped are becoming increasingly common. After recently hearing that many agentic AI projects fail to live up to expectations, customer service reps in a call center say even their AI assistants are proving more of a hindrance than a help.

A study carried out by researchers from several Chinese universities and a Chinese power company looked at what impact AI assistants were having on the plant's customer service reps (CSRs). The results did not paint AI as the miracle assistive technology its creators often portray it as.

One of the biggest complaints was that when transcribing customer audio calls into text, the AI was filled with inaccuracies due to callers' accents, pronunciation, and speech speed. The AI also struggled whenever it had to turn audio consisting of sequences of numbers into text, often getting the likes of phone numbers wrong.

One CSR who took part in the study said, "The AI assistant isn't that smart in reality," adding that "It gives phone numbers in bits and pieces, so I have to manually enter them."

Homophones, words that have the same pronunciation but different meanings, such as new and knew, were another problem area for the AI assistant.

"Hello, I'm here to make your life easier. Or possibly much worse."

Emotion recognition technology, something we've seen several reports about – most of them not good – is also criticized by those interviewed. It often misclassified normal speech as being a negative emotion, had too few categories for the range of emotions people expressed, and often associated a high volume level as someone being angry or upset, even if it was just a person who naturally talks loudly. As a result, most CSRs ignored the emotional tags that the system assigned to callers, saying they were able to understand a caller's tone and emotions themselves.

Ultimately, while the AI assistant did reduce the amount of basic typing required by CSRs, the content it produced was often filled with errors and redundancies. This required workers to go through the call summaries, correcting mistakes and deleting sections. Moreover, the AI often failed to record key information from customers.

"While the AI enhances work efficiency, it simultaneously increases CSRs' learning burdens due to the need for extra adaptation and correction," the report concludes. "The mismatch between technological expectations and actual implementation reflects a common oversight among technology designers, who overestimate efficiency gains while underestimating the implicit learning burdens of adapting to new systems."

The report highlights other problems that AI integration is facing, including employee pushback against the technology's use in call centers and the stress it causes over feared job losses. There's also the customer factor, with many people refusing to use a company that relies so heavily on AI for customer service.

In June, a survey from Gartner found that 50 percent of organizations that had planned to replace CSRs with AI were expected to reverse their decision. More recently, the research firm predicted that over 40 percent of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027.

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Call center workers say their AI assistants create more problems than they solve

 

[Axeia]

Billy Mays here with another fantastic product. But wait there's more!

AI is seriously starting to remind me of those commercials. Promising to be revolutionary and saving time but ignoring the negatives.
This time however it's targeted at businesses rather than couch potatoes.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Hahaha....oh, I feel the pain, sadly.

Used to work a tech help desk for 5 years and I know the feeling of dread when you get a newer tech person on the team that thinks they know what they're doing and won't listen to feedback from the experienced techs. They just create more issues and waste more time.

Spoiler

Had a new tech that had been around for about 3 months. He came across an error that a user site called in about and depending on the hardware in use at the site means there are several ways to resolve the issue. 99% of the time doing a pull drawer on the inflicted register would resolve the issue, but that wasn't the resolution for this case. When it is the case it's usually a 2-3 minute call and the problem is resolved; the store goes about their day and we move on to the next call.

At the time I'm a senior tech. I work 5% of the escalated tickets that no one else can fix (the really odd stuff that takes a lot of digging to find the issue and resolve). I happened to look at the HUD and see this newer guy is on the phone for nearly 15 minutes. I find the ticket he's working on, read through the initial notes about the problem and I check the store's equipment...within 60 seconds I know the following:
1) The issue being called in about
2) The store's hardware equipment
3) The tech's steps and possible resolution to resolve the issue (which he has had the store repeat a dozen different times and each has resulted in the same thing; not fixing the issue).

I know what the problem is and how he can fix it within 60 seconds. I walk to his desk, I tell him the resolution he's trying hasn't worked the first dozen times because the "pull drawer" resolution doesn't apply to the hardware this particular store has and to stop telling the store to do pull drawers. I told him he needs to fix the broken database that's causing the problem and which database to fix. I told him to do that and the store would be back on their feet and he can move on to the next call. He says "Okay." and I go back to my desk.

A little time goes by and I look at the HUD, he's now been on the same call for 25 minutes (way past his allowed time on the phone). I stop what I'm doing and go over there again and I asked him if he did what I told him to do and repair the database. He says, "No, because the error message is fixed with a pull drawer but it's not working."

I told him to fix the database right now. He runs the program to fix the corrupted database, which took about 60 seconds, and the problem was fixed. I told him if I ever give him a resolution to fixing an issue for a store again and that if he fails to do it that him he'd have to have a serious conversation with the floor manager because I don't want someone on the floor that cannot follow instructions and wastes everyone's time, including the customers time and money.

 

[OortCloud]

I won't stay with a company if they are not willing to have real people help me out if I have issues.

 

[Scrye74]

I won't stay with a company if they are not willing to have real people help me out if I have issues.

Have you tried working with "real people"? They aren't that great either.

This is just going from incompetent humans to incompetent fake humans. If goal of these companies was to replace their human CSRs with equivalent AI solutions... goal achieved.

 

[godrilla]

When I get a help desk employee that gives me scripted nonsense, I follow up with am I speaking with an ai. Works every time to get them to think outside the box!

 

[AnilD]

This really highlights how AI often shifts the burden instead of removing it. It automates part of the process, but then humans have to clean up its mistakes — and that invisible labor rarely gets accounted for when we talk about “efficiency.”

 

[fazy shah]

I'm in support and the first question customer asks is

Are you a human or a bot?

 

[WaphleStomp]

AI "support" seriously sucks 455. It's so frustrating I find it easier and less stressful to simply end my subscription and delete my account than attempt to use an AI to provide help - which it never does. AI has useful purposes, but customer support is not one of them.