[Interview] "With AI Adoption... Neither Customers nor Agents Can Enjoy Negligence" [Bbaengbbaengi AI Call Center]⑧

'It Is a Person, Customer' Interview with Author Kim Gwanwook, Professor at Duksung Women's University

Editor's Note“It’s a ‘person,’ not AI, dear customer. How can I assist you?”
Call centers, which everyone has likely used at least once, have transformed from places where agents kindly answered calls and resolved issues into inconvenient spots for financial consumers. The emergence of incomplete ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) consultation services’ has ironically delayed the problem-solving process and increased the time financial consumers experience. This is the irony arising from financial sectors such as banks and card companies replacing human call center agents with AI consultation services. Accordingly, Asia Economy aims to explore the inside story of financial company call centers from various perspectives including financial consumers and workers.

“Ironically, while every step to induce loans is being advanced to allow financial consumers to handle things very easily, both financial consumers and workers (human call center agents) have to endure inconveniences in consultation services. Financial companies ask for understanding, calling it an ‘inevitable change of the times,’ but the benefits are not going to financial consumers or workers,”

Professor Kim Kwan-wook of the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duksung Women's University is being interviewed on the 24th at the Humanities and Social Sciences Building of Duksung Women's University in Dobong-gu, Seoul. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

Kim Gwan-wook, professor of cultural anthropology at Duksung Women’s University, recently stated in an interview with Asia Economy at his research office in Gangbuk-gu, Seoul, “The incomplete AI technology was hastily introduced into call center consultation sites, causing human agents to feel burdened, but the ones complaining about inconvenience and difficulties first are the financial consumers.”

Customers Ask First: “Is This AI or a Person?”

Professor Kim, a medical anthropologist, has focused on call center issues operated by financial companies for over ten years since 2012. In 2022, he published a monograph based on nearly a decade of visiting call centers, interviewing human agents, and conducting research.

Even for Professor Kim, who has been dedicated to call center issues for over ten years, the changes in the labor environment of call centers due to the spread of AI consultation services were surprising. Within just 1-2 years after publishing his monograph, financial consumers (customers) and human agents (workers) experiencing inconvenience and difficulties due to AI consultation began to appear.

Before the main interview, Professor Kim shared an interesting anecdote he heard during follow-up research. Recently, frontline human agents at call centers have actually been using the phrase “I am a person, dear customer.”

He explained, “Since many cases require going through AI consultation services before connecting to a human agent, financial consumers tired of waiting ask before the call, ‘Is this AI or a person?’ Human agents have no choice but to answer, as the book title says, ‘I am a person, dear customer.’ This trend has settled in just 1-2 years.”

Professor Kim added, “Of course, AI is helpful in solving problems during nighttime hours when connecting to an agent is impossible via chatbots and quickly guiding simple inquiries. However, for the matters I need immediately, the waiting time has actually become longer. AI was introduced for faster connection and quicker problem resolution, that is, customer convenience, but in reality, it has not helped financial consumers.”

AI That Still ‘Cannot Listen’... Customer Convenience Backfires

Professor Kim pointed to incomplete AI technology as the cause of AI consultation services, introduced for customer convenience, ironically causing customer inconvenience. The essence of call center consultation is the ability to ‘listen’?understanding and summarizing customers’ inconveniences and complaints?but AI consultation services have not yet reached the level to replace human agents’ ‘listening,’ he explained.

He said, “Listening in call center consultation requires not only recognizing the consultation content but also interpreting nonverbal information such as the client’s age, voice, intonation, and emotions. It also requires the ability to quickly summarize and organize this information to provide necessary details. However, the current level of AI consultation services falls short of this.”

He continued, “This uncomfortable situation for both financial consumers and human agents stems from financial companies’ prejudice that ‘customer consultation does not require expertise and, as unskilled labor, can be fully replaced by AI.’ Many still think of AI as an automated response system (ARS) that simply repeats tasks like a robot, and there is also an aspect of exaggerating AI’s capabilities in advertising.”

As an alternative, Professor Kim suggested initially using AI technology as a secretary role, that is, as a work assistance tool. He said, “If financial companies claim to use AI for the satisfaction of both financial consumers and workers, realistically, AI should serve as a secretary that quickly provides accurate information based on the results identified by human agents. However, unfortunately, many financial companies still restrict human agents?who are ‘outsourced company employees, not insiders’?from accessing AI secretary functions.”

He also mentioned cases where some commercial banks recognized the limitations of AI consultation services and adjusted their approach. Professor Kim said, “One commercial bank reportedly lowered its target for replacing human agents with AI from 60% to 20% after operating AI consultation services. They are also encouraging human agents to use AI as a secretary, which has been well received by the agents.”

Now Selling Conscience Instead of Kindness... Human Agents Facing Increased Labor Intensity

Just as AI consultation services unintentionally caused some inconvenience to customers, they have also become an unexpected burden for human agents working on the front lines, according to Professor Kim. While dealing with angry financial consumers due to delayed complaint handling makes work difficult, AI replacing simple tasks has actually increased individual workloads.

This trend is also changing the labor patterns of human call center agents. As AI reduces simple consultation tasks, new duties are assigned to human agents, and existing emotional labor is being replaced by ‘ethical labor’ or ‘moral labor.’ A representative example is ‘debt collection.’

Professor Kim explained, “If previous call center labor was emotional labor involving insults from black consumers, recent call center labor has shifted to ethical and moral labor, where agents are intensively involved in collection tasks to expand financial companies’ profits, sometimes insulting delinquent customers or forming empathy to induce repayment. In other words, while previously they sold ‘kindness’ as an emotion, now they are forced to work by selling responsibility and conscience.”

This trend also affects financial consumers receiving consultation services. Professor Kim said, “Agents no longer consider their work emotional labor. Even if financial consumers feel agents are unfriendly, quickly ending calls and taking more calls is actually the shortcut to receiving good evaluations.”

Separately, the quality of employment is also deteriorating. Not only is call center staff overall shrinking, but the vacancies left by human agents who quit due to increased work intensity are being filled with unstable labor forms, Professor Kim explained.

He said, “Over nearly ten years of exponential growth in the call center industry, many women with career breaks have experience in call centers, so companies can recruit experienced human agents without investing much time or cost. Even if human agents quit due to increased work intensity from AI consultation, their positions are mostly filled by short-term contract workers.”

Professor Kim Kwan-wook of the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duksung Women's University is being interviewed on the 24th at the Humanities and Social Sciences Building of Duksung Women's University in Dobong-gu, Seoul. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

Call Centers Are the Frontline of AI-Labor Issues: “We Need a Public Forum”

Professor Kim believes that due to the nature of consultation labor mentioned above, it will take considerable time before AI consultation services fully replace human agents. However, he argued that the problems in the call center industry, which cause inconvenience to both financial consumers and human agents, urgently call for social discussion about AI.

Since the call center industry is where AI is penetrating fastest, conflicts like these are likely to appear everywhere in the future, but our society is still focusing only on the ‘golden future’ of AI.

Professor Kim said, “The call center industry is where AI and labor collide most rapidly, but except for the parties involved and the media, interest is low. Since it is an industry where the whole world is racing, AI is an unavoidable future, but thinking that this future will benefit everyone is a big mistake. Like in the U.S. and Europe, we need to establish a social public forum to start discussions on AI and labor.”