Artificial Intelligence and Service Relationships

The tenth session of the seminar organised by GRETS, "Artificial Intelligence and Service Relationships ", will be attended by Julia Velkovska - SENSE, ORANGE / CEMS, EHESS. The session will be introduced by Cécile Caron - GRETS-EDF R&D.

How do digital technologies and modern organizations involve users and customers? What do they make us do, more or less explicitly, around and beyond access to services?

Drawing on the results of ethnographic and video-ethnographic surveys of service interactions, the talk will focus on new forms of customer work in the digital regime. Organizational policies that value the figure of the “autonomous” and “participating” customer are, in fact, based on specific devices for transferring tasks to consumers Julia Velkovska will focus on two of these increasingly important devices for putting customers to work: conversational robots and consumer collectives. Favored by the organizational uses of digital technology and AI, this model of the service relationship is actually participating in a radical change in the place of customers in the service production chain, moving in the direction of an ever-greater expansion of their contribution to co-production.

Taking interaction as her analytical entry point, Julia Velkovska explores this phenomenon on the scale of situations and activities. The aim is to capture the new forms of customer work in a diversity of social situations and technologies: from voice assistants in the home to scenes of the digitalization of service relationships through social robots, voice or text chatbots, online forums, as well as disputes and scandals in the company's physical reception areas. At the crossroads of the sociology of work, the sociology of the digital and the sociologies of interactions, the fields of investigation cross both the ordinary activities of customers and the work activities of professionals in contact with digital objects. They highlight the invisible and plural human work required for digital objects to function.

• Julia Velkovska is a sociologist at Orange Innovation's Laboratoire des Sciences Humaines et Sociales (SENSE) and an associate researcher at the Centre d'Etude des Mouvements Sociaux (CEMS) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, where she has led the “Sociologie du numérique” seminar since 2021.

• Kreplak Y. & Velkovska J. (2025) « Ethnomethodological Ethnography » in Carlin A., Dennis A., Jenkings K., Lindwall O. and Mair M. (eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnomethodology, London, Routledge.
• Beaudouin V. et Velkovska J. (dir.) (2023) « Ethique de l’IA: enquêtes de terrain », Réseaux n° 240, Paris, La Découverte.
• Bellon, A. & Velkovska, J. (2023). « L’intelligence artificielle dans l’espace public : du domaine scientifique au problème public: Enquête sur un processus de publicisation controversé ». Réseaux n°240.
• Relieu M. et Velkovska J. (dir.) (2020) « Ethnographies des Agents Conversationnels », Réseaux n° 220- 221, Paris, La Découverte.
• Velkovska J. et Zouinar M. (2020) « Les relations aux ‘machines‘conversationnelles’. Vivre avec les assistants vocaux à la maison » in Relieu M. et Velkovska J. « Ethnographies des Agents Conversationnels », Réseaux n° 220-221, Paris, La Découverte, pp. 47-79.
• Velkovska J. (2015) « La ‘communauté de marque’ comme accomplissement pratique. Ethnographie du travail des webconseillers en coulisses d’un forum de consommateurs », Communication, 33 (2),
• Velkovska J. et Beaudouin V. (2014) « Parler aux machines, coproduire un service. Intelligence artificielle et nouvelles formes de contribution du client dans les services téléphoniques de l’après-vente » in Kessous E., Mallard A. (dir.), La Fabrique de la vente. Le travail commercial dans les télécommunications, Paris, Presses des Mines, pp. 97-128.