Tata’s head of business process outsourcing said chatbots may result in a "minimal" need for call centres in the next 12 months.

I hope so, I work in Customer Service and I'm good at my job, top stats, top metrics, 20 years experience both call center and retail combined.

When that happens customers will gravitate towards products that have better customer service. Companies, always looking for the next thing they can upcharge for, will start offering "Live Customer Service" as a premium service.

In turn actually being GOOD at customer service will become preferred and competitive. In my experience most Customer Service reps are ok at their job, they know how to talk to people, how to handle aggression, how to control call and conversation flow and naturally have strong empathetic skills. Others are there because they need a paycheck, know the job only requires basics skills and take everything personally and don't give two shits about providing good Customer service. If you work in Customer service, especially in some larger companies, then you know who these people are.

That in turn may actually, finally, help raise pay for us in the field. If a machine is better then you at talking to another person then you are not meant to be in this line of work OR the AI has already won once it can fool a person reliably and we have bigger issues to worry about.

Side note cause I've always wanted to say it..In the gaming field QA is NOT customer service and however bad you have it, CS has it worse.