Good read, clearly you lot are making some decent internal products cause the customer service lot do an amazing job
Ugh… I would love one of those fluorescent cards. 
Totally agree with you about bots - in my experience they simply get in the way. Most simple queries that they can help with are better sorted by having the correct functionality in the app in the first place.
This is also true with automated phone bots. When they ask “What are you calling about” and you don’t say the specific command they want then it’s more of a pain to get through to someone. I know this happens with me and paypal who’s bot couldn’t understand my accent and or me saying “Refund”
I had exactly same problems with Paypal, probably amplified because English is not my native language. If something doesn’t go as planned, the bloody thing just goes back to where you were and you have to try all over again 
. I initially requested callback with estimation that in should happen in about 20 mins, after 2 hours I called back and went through the same “tell us what you want” painful process again. Once I got through to a human being, it was quick and easy. 
Probably only acceptable bot is one asking you to press 1 if…, press 2 if…, though it should be probably no more than 4 options, so people don’t forget what was number 2 when they hear number 8. 
It would be good if on the user end of an in-app chat my first message sent said “awaiting response, current average response time is 5m30sec” rather than just “read”, which makes you wonder wtf they doing if they read it minutes ago but haven’t typed anything. Sounds minor but I have found whenever the cops are a bit busy a query can just sit on “read” and a short time like 5mins30secs can feel like half an hour when you’re sitting there with an expected time of Unknown (like waiting for a bus without knowing when it is coming… the amount of times I waited “an hour” for a bus that comes every 8 mins ).