> Agents (if implemented well) are an order of magnitude more effective at resolving issues compared to a call centre worker who is reading off a script and churn within 9 months

For this to be true, the agent needs to actually be given the means to solve the problem, otherwise an "agent" is just a glorified help page that wastes your time.

But it seems like companies don't want to do this part, possibly because of fears that someone will trick the agent into giving them a refund or something. Or because the actual goal is to optimize for fewer costly refunds/cancellations/policy exceptions etc.

So for whatever reason, they stay stuck in that useless local maxima while simultaneously making traditional help increasingly difficult to get ahold of when needed for an overall net worse experience as a customer.