the foothills of automated customer support

I been noticing more smarter AI in customer service these days. A recent example: I docked my BIXI but the thing glitched and the ride didn't terminate. I only realized when I tried to get my next bike out. In the past when this happened to me, I just called up BIXI support, went through a short phone menu, and explained the situation to someone on the phone. They verified my identity and manually terminated the ride so I could go on my way. Basically, the ideal phone-based customer support experience. The wait wasn't long, the procedure was efficient, each step made sense, and it solved my problem. This time, the app prompted me to ask for support via "chat" first. Historically, this could have meant all sorts of things: a naive keyword recognition program that would recommend FAQ entries to me; a tech support worker from a country with a low median wage pasting in responses from a script, 5 tickets at a time; occasionally, the type of person I'd been talking to on the phone, but…