Dive Brief:
- A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation last week to discourage companies from moving customer service operations offshore or replacing live agents with AI.
- The Keep Call Centers in America Act, sponsored by Sens. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Jim Justice, R-W.Va., would require businesses to notify the Department of Labor at least 120 days before relocating a call center operations or contracting out call center work overseas.
- The legislation would also require call center agents to disclose the physical location of the call center and indicate whether AI is being used. Workers would also be required to transfer callers to a customer service operation in the U.S. upon request.
Dive Insight:
The proposed bill aims to protect jobs by reducing access to government funds for companies that move call center jobs overseas.
The legislation would apply to businesses with at least 50 full-time employees, or have at least 50 employees who work at least 1,500 hours per week in aggregate. When such companies move call center operations overseas, they would be added to a list that makes them ineligible for new federal grants and federal guaranteed loans.
Employers would remain on the list for five years unless they bring an equal or greater number of call center jobs back to the U.S. or renegotiate their contract with a third-party entity to require U.S-based call center work.
Affected companies would have 180 days to be removed from the list and become eligible for new grants and loans. Those with existing awards would be charged a monthly penalty, and the award would be canceled if the company remains on the list one year after the first penalty is paid.
The legislation is similar to the United States Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act, which was introduced by Senate Democrats last year. However, that bill, which was introduced but referred to a committee, didn’t include provisions regarding AI.
If the new legislation seeks to demonstrate the importance of humans in customer support, it is well-intentioned, according to Mario Matulich, president of Customer Management Practice. However, he warned, if it aims to discourage technological innovation it could negatively impact customer experience and job security.
AI done right enhances the customer experience by elevating agents’ roles from reading scripts to making human connections, according to Matulich. The customer service community should focus on investing in AI for better self-service while enabling live agents to deliver more personalized support.
“The CX winners are already seeing success by combining AI with the emotional intelligence of customer contact professionals,” Matulich said in email commentary. “Protecting jobs and improving CX are not mutually exclusive.”
Regardless of companies’ intentions, the rise of AI has call center workers nervous. Customer service representatives were the one of the professions most anxious about being replaced by AI, according to a Careerminds survey of more than 3,000 people.
