[davb]

Agreed. And chatbots also leave no room for discretionary exemptions. My headset microphone broke recently (after the warranty period) - emailing the company and asking if there was any way I could buy a new one netted me a free replacement and a nice note from a real person. I’m 100% convinced that a chatbot would have told me that based on the serial number my headset was out of warranty and ended the chat.

[xp84]

This is a shallow reading of what a “bot” could be capable of. Whoever is running customer service at that company has obviously decided that for certain situations people should be entitled to courtesy replacements. That decision was not contingent on who is taking the calls. When that person makes the decision to shift some/all workload to chatbots, he, or she could easily teach the bots what types of courtesy repairs or replacements should be considered, and the criteria they should meet.

For instance, in your case, the rep probably knew that the part cost a couple bucks and the postage cost a buck or two, so a three dollar expense was deemed well worth it for goodwill.

This is the kind of thing that a bot would be just as good at, and it’s also a thing that does not automatically happen just because the agents are humans. Some companies would fire the human rep for giving you that freebie.

Honestly, the real reason why bots will be a good thing is that 3/4 of customer service calls come from confused people who really just need handholding. Setting the jobs issue aside, which is going to be a much bigger question across humanity, eventually I’d like to see bots handle that 3/4 of calls. Half the customer service staff could be retained and deployed exclusively to handle the issues actually worth their time.