When Better Opportunities Backfire: Service Worker Responses to Parallel AI Deployment in Customer Acquisition
As AI voice agents get deployed in high-volume contact centers, firms can route low-intent leads to AI and allocate high-intent leads to human workers. Drawing on sequential search theory, we posit that AI-induced task allocation reshapes work, enriching opportunities facing human workers but also raising their reservation value for continuing with the lead in hand, making them less willing to persist. We study the effects of an AI voice-agent deployment at a Chinese online health-insurance brokerage using more than a half million customer outreach records surrounding the rollout. Adopting a regression-discontinuity-in-time design, we trace how worker behavior changes across the workday. ...
| Authors | Xinyu Fu, Shulong Luo, Narayan Ramasubbu et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | econ.GN |
| Published | 19 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 19 October 2026 |
Popularity, last 4 days
0 now. Counts as reported by the source, snapshotted daily by Silytics.
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 23 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.