{"doi":"10.48550/arxiv.2411.02408","title":"AI on My Shoulder: Supporting Emotional Labor in Front-Office Roles with an LLM-based Empathetic Coworker","abstract":"Client-Service Representatives (CSRs) are vital to organizations. Frequent interactions with disgruntled clients, however, disrupt their mental well-being. To help CSRs regulate their emotions while interacting with uncivil clients, we designed Care-Pilot, an LLM-powered assistant, and evaluated its efficacy, perception, and use. Our comparative analyses between 665 human and Care-Pilot-generated support messages highlight Care-Pilot's ability to adapt to and demonstrate empathy in various incivility incidents. Additionally, 143 CSRs assessed Care-Pilot's empathy as more sincere and actionable than human messages. Finally, we interviewed 20 CSRs who interacted with Care-Pilot in a simulation exercise. They reported that Care-Pilot helped them avoid negative thinking, recenter thoughts, and humanize clients; showing potential for bridging gaps in coworker support. Yet, they also noted deployment challenges and emphasized the indispensability of shared experiences. We discuss future designs and societal implications of AI-mediated emotional labor, underscoring empathy as a critical function for AI assistants for worker mental health.","journal":"arXiv (Cornell University)","year":2024,"id":506142,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.96,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1357424,"name":"Zhong, Qiuyue \"Joy\"","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1357425,"name":"Jash Rajesh Parekh","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1357426,"name":"Jeon, Yechan","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1357427,"name":"Robert Zimmerman","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":555859,"name":"Mary Czerwinski","orcid":"0000-0003-0881-401X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":465879,"name":"Jina Suh","orcid":"0000-0002-7646-5563","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":299657,"name":"Varun Mishra","orcid":"0000-0003-3891-5460","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":498029,"name":"Koustuv Saha","orcid":"0000-0002-8872-2934","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":554615,"name":"Javier Hernandez","orcid":"0000-0001-9504-5217","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1338825,"name":"Vedant Das Swain","orcid":"0000-0001-6871-3523","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:10:50.984927Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}