6 Minute English / Call centres: Are you talking to AI?

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Phil.

And I'm Pippa. Have you ever phoned up a company and had your call held in a queue? If you have, then you've probably heard messages like this:

AI call agentHello. Your call is important to us. You are number 89 in the queue. If you'd like to continue to hold, press 1. If you'd like to return to the main menu, press 0.

How do you feel when your phone call is put on hold, Phil?

Oh, frustrated usually, although I do like it when there's a number saying how many people are in front of you. That's good.

Well, when your call is finally connected, it's usually a call centre worker you'll speak to a real live person who'll hopefully fix your problem. But increasingly, this work is now done using artificial intelligence, or AI. And this is causing problems in countries like India and the Philippines, where call centre jobs make up a big part of the economy.

In this programme, we'll be asking who's really in charge at the call centre: humans or AI? As always, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary. And remember you can read along with the programme, and find the list of new words and phrases, by visiting our website, bbclearningenglish.com.

But now I have a question for you, Phil. Around the world, numbers of call centre workers have grown rapidly in recent years. If you're listening to this, maybe you're a call centre worker yourself. So, approximately how many people work in call centres globally, Phil? Is it:

a) 7 million?b) 17 million? or,c) 27 million?