New Delhi, Sept. 25 -- AI can reason, write, and act with remarkable sophistication. But put that intelligence on a live customer call, and an entirely different set of challenges begins.

Picture a Monday morning. A shopkeeper discovers that a payment has not reached his account and calls his bank.

An AI agent answers. It understands the problem, traces the payment, and finds a solution within seconds. Then the conversation begins.

There is a two-second silence before the agent responds. The shopkeeper says "hello?" just as the agent starts speaking, and they talk over each other. The agent struggles with his accent. He repeats himself. A few moments later, he asks for a human.

The intelligence was never the problem. What failed was t...