Call Center Workers Fed Up with Being Mistaken for AI

Employees of call centers in the USA, Canada, Australia, and Greece are increasingly being mistaken for artificial intelligence, according to reports. Those who spend their days interacting with customers describe bizarre and tense conversations, with callers demanding evidence that they’re speaking to a real person.

One worker at Concentrix, who works from home in Oklahoma, shares that clients often yell and interrupt her. Some outright ask if she is AI, while others insist on speaking to a representative. Many callers are already frustrated with the automated system that handles inquiries before connecting them to a live operator. When conversations start according to a standard script, people often assume they’re dealing with a machine again. The Concentrix employee recounts that in such moments, callers begin to shout and hang up, leaving her in shock and sometimes in tears, struggling to understand why they yelled at her at nine in the morning.

Another Concentrix employee from the USA notes he is mistaken for AI about once a week. In April, a customer interrogated him for nearly twenty minutes, asking about hobbies, fishing, and the type of fishing rod he used. According to the Concentrix operator, it felt as if the customer himself was an AI trying to grasp human thought processes.

A fraud prevention operator in the USA revealed that she encounters this scenario three to four times a month. She tries to change her tone and interrupt clients to emphasize that she is not a machine. According to her, AI does not interrupt; it simply allows the user to speak. Therefore, in tense situations, she makes a point to clarify that she is a real person working in an office in the southern United States.