I worked in a call center years ago doing tech support for broadband issues. I'd say 80% of calls fell into 1 of around 20 problem categories (cannot connect, web pages don't load, reset my password, help me clear my search history before my wife comes home). Lots of repetition with slightly augmented instructions depending on the callers needs/ability (pacing, alternative descriptions, more/less commanding depending on their ability to stay on topic). Call times mattered, so like a priest in a brothel, you were always searching for the fastest way to finish things up. Sometimes that meant going slower, sometimes it meant being slightly rude and cutting people off mid-rant so that you could get to the part where you flip the switch and the problem is solved. Wrap-time (time 'wasted' between calls) mattered, so if you had a ranty bastard screaming at you on a call for 10 minutes, you (the human, with human behaviors and soft feelings) had to "get over that shit" in seconds and switch to your baseline state for the next ranty bastard in the queue. On any given day I would converse with something like 100 people for roughly 5 minutes. It's like if speed dating was your job, but instead of flirting, you have to fix their printer while they glare at you. It was a constant stream of human interactions which neither party wanted to have. It made me HATE speaking on the phone with people. It made me great at blocking out peoples current emotional state and get them aligned and working on a goal, or said another way: "Fuck your feelings, we got shit to do and then we never need to speak to each other again!". That isn't normal now is it. So my guess is that AI will be a shit show at the start but it will eventually end up being BETTER for customers in the end, you get to rant to someone that sounds real, they will respond in the most efficient way to help you vent. They will sound authentic and genuine when they express remorse for your lack of service. And they will forget you instantly when you hang up.
People rag on Comcast? Because it's a terrible company? But for most people, Comcast is the worst company they know. They're unaware of the abysmal nature of Cox, or Time Warner, or Ziply, or Frontier. Comcast is, in my opinion, doing this the right way - the 80% of calls that go into basic troubleshooting categories are shunted off onto a text robot. They know you're going to get less mad at an SMS because expressing rage through emoji is infantilizing and they declare their robotic nature front and center so carefully wording your outrage just takes time (cools you down) and increases the likelihood that the robot will misunderstand you. Where they go wrong is in protecting the fuck out of the phone tree such that if I have an actual problem caused by actual Comcast, I have to battle robots for ten minutes before I can get a human to roll a truck. Worse, my entire interaction with the robot is washed away and I get to start over with the human. I can see AI improving the shit out of this. Give the AI the chat, let it wrap up when it fails, send a summary to the human, and then butt the fuck out. I can absolutely pull up a panel that says "waiting calls" "serviced calls" "abandoned calls" "longest waiting" "average waiting" and "average talking." It's one button on my app. I've never given a shit because I know that all my receptionist's calls are complicated AF. And I think that's my basic beef more than anything - when you have a "phone pool"-type employment class, the technology makes you look for ways to punish the humans that aren't molding to the tech. The proper way to do it is to utilize the humans' expertise to the fullest. And if you have created a worker class that does not require expertise but still requires them to interact with technology that drives them like plow horses? You should be ashamed of yourself.