I have some friends who work in customer service, and every time when I talk to them, they all complain about how they hate people and the way they get treated badly. There are already so many statistical reports of how toxic these environments are and concerns about customer service staff’s mental well-being. Though the work mainly works with humans, they experience mental block, fatigue, and a lack of empathy from face-to-face problems in restaurants to responding to requests by phone and emails in banking companies. The accumulated stress and chronic acute fatigue can also impact cognitive empathy because, unlike B2B clients who have professional manners, their customers are diverse and they have to maintain a smiley face and start the conversation with questions like “How are you?”, “How can I help you?”
Neoliberalism vs Neo/Post-Marxist arguments
The development of free/open source software/hardware and the Web 2.0 Internet has supported the post-capitalist economic paradigm which shifts the focus from bureaucratic and hierarchical management to democratic self-management. In this digital age, we have witnessed the information technology transformation in most industries and seen significant improvement in productivity and efficiency.
Neoliberal arguments hold on to the exciting development of digitalization and AI technology. They believe that humans are capable of doing so much more than repetitive mundane tasks which could be done better by AI robots, as a result, we have more opportunities to innovate and increase autonomy in high-skilled labor jobs. Whereas, Neo/Post-Marxist arguments care more about unemployment, precarity, and inequalities as the consequence of unequal advancement in technology and the knowledge gap, in which strongly technical skills are not universal for the marginalized to grasp, thus, exacerbating income inequalities. However, the temporal unemployment period resulted from the technological and economic transformation is inevitable and requires the ability and a progressive worldview to quickly adapt to the change, which even creates more jobs than low-skilled labor jobs substituted by machines.
Digitalization enables everyone to participate in the free flow of information, peer-to-peer networks, and all technologies like 3D printers, and free/pirated source software/hardware with 0 marginal costs. They have all access to whatever they want to do with their own will. In other words, Rifkin (2014) holds to the point that advanced robots, AI, big data, and algorithms might be the answer to free humans from algorithmic daily work and alienation of wage labor and pursue their own interests. Moreover, digitalization also embraces the working-from-home culture and supports neoliberalism to outsource people all around the world.
Isn’t it good? When robots are part of the customer service approach
Walking around in a Sephora store (or any store), have you ever felt so shy to ask the staff something? Nowadays, robots can recognize products and guide you through the store. Or have you seen waiters/waitresses get scolded because they mistook something or broke some cups? Here in China, some restaurants have adopted robots to do these tasks in combination with humans.
Back to the concerns that if these low-skilled labor jobs are filled by robots, what are humans going to do? Humans apparently have to reallocate their workforce, as they are not directly going to work themselves but learn to control the process, the robots, and the administrative tasks that require higher skillset, like the way we moved from manually to automatically like harvesting or hiring process.
For example, in financial services, employees will rely on data provided by the financial robot to better advise customers on how to handle their finances.
Acosta, Manager of IT Systems and Innovation Technology at Centria Servicios, an administrative service provider for Grupo Breca.
Make humans more… human?
As robots as a service ad humans seem to be free from mundane tasks in customer services that are emotionless, causing fatigue, and treating them inferior to customers, they might have more opportunities to create, more freedom to improve their living quality and spend more time on what they want and personal life.
References:
Beyond neoliberalism: Digitization, freedom and the workplace: https://ephemerajournal.org/contribution/beyond-neoliberalism-digitization-freedom-and-workplace
What Will People Do When Robots Take Over Mundane Tasks?: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2018/10/16/what-will-people-do-when-robots-take-over-mundane-tasks-/?sh=6dca35b04653
I really liked you topic. Especially because you distinguish 2 viewpoints about the use of technology and to be more specific in customer service. I think that is the problem of robots: to every advantage is a disadvantage.
We others really like to see a real person, other don’t like contact at all and love for instance those waitress robots.
I also really like the question you ask at the end: do robots make humans more human? That’s something I will think about after readings this 🙂
Hi!! I think you very clearly explained the two different sides to this development. It is definitely an interesting question, if robots taking over mundane tasks in the workforce will help people create more time for themselves! I think it will certainly help some people, but on the other hand, I think a group of people will only suffer because of the consequences.
All in all, if a place is understaffed, I feel it is a definite win to employ robots to help lessen the workload of the personnel.
Hi! Hi! Person who works in customer service here and absolutely despises every second of it, guilt-tripped into working because wer’re understaffed and all the good stuff! While I am super pro-including robots, I think robots should only be used as support to existing staff. In my personal experience, customers really appreciate human connection, talking to you, sharing their stories. Especially during the pandemic, working at Kruidvat (which was open because medicine) i was the only point of human contact for a lot of (especially elderly) people and unfortunately robots do not give that type of human connection and personal advice that customers appreciate. However, having robots as support so I don’t have to do 5 things at once would be great and I would love a future where people in customer service don’t want to give up on life. With that aside, to come to your question on robots making us human, robots allow us to reflect on ourselves because they are created in our own image. we can ask the question what makes us human, and that awareness of our own identity is what makes us human. Good post!!!
Yea true, the world definitely becomes cold-hearted if all people working in customer service are replaced by robots lol But I guess it would be great if people can kinda stay behind and moderate robots to do the tasks, and also considering the fact that people working there are underpaid (I’m not sure about everything but from what my friends normally complain how they are exhausted and drained physically and mentally), if they get paid more and more robots available to support them, I think it’s better for all parties
Really interesting framing. I think it is so important to have good workers’ policies to make this “robotification” happen without making people jobless. I think this already starts in the way we look at the education system. I do also hope that robots will give more way for humanity, but I have doubts considering the current neo-liberal context.