{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,7]],"date-time":"2026-10-07T06:49:33Z","timestamp":1791355773489,"version":"4.3.1"},"reference-count":63,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,7]],"date-time":"2026-10-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1791331200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Artif. Intell."],"abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    Many customer support employees encounter aggressive customer attitudes, including overt dissatisfaction, unreasonable demands, and verbal abuse. Such attitudes do not always stem solely from customers: inadequate employee responses can amplify dissatisfaction and escalate initially manageable issues, making skills that prevent escalation critical. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) enable role-play training with virtual interlocutors. However, role-play systems in which virtual customer attitudes shift in response to the trainee's utterances under pedagogically grounded rules remain underexplored, and evaluations of such systems rely on reaction-level measures taken immediately after use, whose relation to later workplace outcomes has not been examined in a deployment. We developed an LLM-powered training system that provides spoken dialogues with a virtual customer whose emotional expressions adapt to the employee's utterances, paired with a virtual coach for feedback. The core of the system is a state-based dialogue framework in which the virtual interlocutor's attitude escalates or de-escalates according to five binary action flags assigned to each trainee utterance, under rules co-designed with experienced call-center practitioners. We conducted a 4-week field study in an operating customer support organization, randomly assigning twelve employees to a customer-service scenario group (\n                    <jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\n                    = 6) or a structurally matched non-customer-service scenario group (\n                    <jats:italic>n<\/jats:italic>\n                    = 6), each completing two intervention sessions 1 week apart. The largest estimate was for motivation for behavioral change immediately after use, favoring the customer service group (\n                    <jats:italic>g<\/jats:italic>\n                    = 1.11, 95% CI [\u20130.33, 2.55]). Over 4 weeks, the between-group contrasts on change scores were small and slightly favored the comparison group (responsiveness\n                    <jats:italic>g<\/jats:italic>\n                    = \u20130.26, 95% CI [-1.55, 1.03]; productivity\n                    <jats:italic>g<\/jats:italic>\n                    = \u20130.24, 95% CI [\u20131.53, 1.05]); the corresponding within-group estimates in the customer service group were medium-to-large (responsiveness\n                    <jats:italic>g<\/jats:italic>\n                    = 0.72, 95% CI [\u20130.48, 1.92]; productivity\n                    <jats:italic>g<\/jats:italic>\n                    = 0.77, 95% CI [\u20130.45, 1.99]). All intervals include zero. The largest estimate fell on the measure whose content matched the customer-service material, and participants' comments followed the same pattern. We therefore argue that reaction-level measures aligned with training content cannot on their own evidence training effectiveness, and we report the framework and the deployment procedure as a basis for better-powered evaluations.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/frai.2026.1953650","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,7]],"date-time":"2026-10-07T05:50:28Z","timestamp":1791352228000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Preventing escalation in customer service: immediate motivation and 4-week outcomes in a workplace deployment of LLM role-play training"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"9","author":[{"given":"Kazuhiro","family":"Shidara","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Fujitsu Limited","place":["Kanagawa, Japan"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Sho","family":"Iwasaki","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Fujitsu Limited","place":["Kanagawa, Japan"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Shuji","family":"Awai","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Fujitsu Limited","place":["Kanagawa, Japan"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Tomoe","family":"Iida","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Fujitsu Limited","place":["Kanagawa, Japan"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Tatsuya","family":"Yoshimura","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Fujitsu Limited","place":["Kanagawa, Japan"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Takahiro","family":"Yoshioka","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Fujitsu Limited","place":["Kanagawa, Japan"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Kyoko","family":"Shimada","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Kokoro Balance Research Institute","place":["Tokyo, Japan"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Masayuki","family":"Kiriu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Kokoro Balance Research Institute","place":["Tokyo, Japan"]},{"name":"Department of Social Psychology, Toyo University","place":["Tokyo, Japan"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Takeshi","family":"Konno","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Fujitsu Limited","place":["Kanagawa, Japan"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"331","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1744-6570.1989.tb00661.x","article-title":"Kirkpatrick's levels of training criteria: thirty years later","volume":"42","author":"Alliger","year":"1989","journal-title":"Pers. 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