IndustriesSupport & after-salesE-commerce2026-10-07
When service teams get AI: faster and better rated — but retrials unchanged, and top agents get worse
A large-scale field experiment in Alibaba's after-sales chat support: the assistant only drafts opening diagnoses and proposals, agents can adopt, modify or ignore — and who is using it decides the outcome.
Design: a large-scale field experiment with Alibaba randomised whether human chat agents could access a generative AI assistant that drafts issue diagnoses and solution proposals in the opening stage only; agents could adopt, modify or disregard them, so the study estimates effects of both access and usage.