I don't think they're trivial to automate, actually. Take the Home Depot self-checkout counters. They're already present in most (all?) Home Depot locations tha

I don't think they're trivial to automate, actually. Take the Home Depot self-checkout counters. They're already present in most (all?) Home Depot locations that I've visited. But Home Depot hasn't gotten rid of clerks entirely. This is probably in part because the self-checkout counters don't always work properly. Furthermore, there are things Home Depot sells which the self-checkout machines can't process. Based on that example, it seems that automating clerks well enough to eliminate clerks altogether is actually a hard problem. As for call centers, they already are heavily automated, and have been for some time. Every touchtone menu you're forced to deal with is evidence of this fact. Nonetheless, there comes a point when touchtone menus can't solve the customer's problem. (I for one only call a company if I'm facing an unusual situation, so the touchtone menu never solves my problem.) Because artificial intelligence cannot yet listen to a person's problems and devise a solution, human operators are still needed.