AI Empowerment: The virtuous circle of employee wellbeing and customer satisfaction

- Kala Iyer, Technology Managing Director, Capita

In March 2024, the European parliament approved the world's first comprehensive framework for “constraining the risks of AI” and preventing “AI systems that negatively affect safety or fundamental rights.” In 2023, the New York Times had run a story about Ylonda Sherrod, a call centre worker, and her fears that AI might take over her job. NYT wrote “To many people, A.I. feels like a ticking time bomb, sure to explode their work. But to some, like Ms. Sherrod, the threat of A.I. isn’t abstract. They can already feel its effects.” Amid the more stringent regulatory laws and genuine fears of job displacement, the arrival of AI is seen as a disruptive force that is going to change the entire business landscape.  

On the other hand, organisations have a reason for choosing to adopt AI in their business processes: better customer experience. With the ever-increasing customer expectations, customer service must change with it. 72% of customers want immediate service. Unfortunately, many enterprises are not equipped to keep pace with these demands: 40% of companies find it difficult to manage first response and resolution times. It has inevitably created adverse reactions and repercussions. 56% of customer service agents are experiencing stress, which is leading to agent attrition.

Dispelling the fears of an AI takeover, managing customer expectations, and maintaining agents’ wellbeing are key  challenges for a modern business.  

AI enables, not replaces  

Fears of mass job loss from automation would always make waves when a new technology was introduced. Since the first industrial revolution and all the way through the modern AI revolution, businesses have been cautious of new technologies. Though the fears are real— AI can undoubtedly improve efficiency, create customised experiences, and spark new capabilities—they represent only one part of the story.  

While AI is accelerating a profound transformation in the way we work and do business, it is not a threat. The meteoric rise of AI has in fact renewed the focus on humans. According to the World Economic Forum, AI will create 97 million jobs by 2025, more jobs than it will purportedly displace. 

At the same time, there are places where human nuances can never entirely be replicated by AI. These jobs call for substantial problem-solving and adaptability, critical decision-making, ethical judgment and integrity, building human relationships, creativity, strategy, and empathy and engagement. Also, the collaboration between humans and AI, rather than the replacement of humans with AI,  can augment business processes through the synchronous training and learning that can  improve human productivity.  

AI: A new era of customer and agent-centric solution  

AI has emerged as a key contributor that promises to transform customer experience. The availability of sophisticated AI, with its ability to ensure speed, convenience, and consistency, is definitely changing the game. While traditional automation focuses on automating tasks and rules-based processes, AI has brought in an intelligent, cognitive technological bundle to reinvent operating models and take not only a customer-focused approach, but also redefine the way agents work and serve customers. It now automates customer service, augments agents, and helps businesses discover insights and make informed decisions. In short, modern technologies have evolved from simply automating traditional customer support to completely transforming user experience in ways never thought possible.  

Agents can now focus on what matters the most  

Traditional non-personalised IVR systems have been around for decades, and they treat all customers the same regardless of the unique problems those customers might encounter. 

AI-powered contact centres come with conversational, cognitive capabilities, enabling businesses to improve CX, reduce the cost to serve, and greatly enhance agents’ wellness quotient. Contact Centres have historically been known to be high-stress environments, being one of the key reasons for rapid churn across the industry.  AI can help deliver integrated solutions that enable customers to self-serve for a range of transactions without having to wait for human engagement and make human advisors available for more value-added, revenue-enhancing activities. The results are spectacular: organisations can provide highly contextual, hyper-personalised responses based on customer-specific information. 

Capita and technology  

Capita has been on technology-led journey through its strategic collaborations with global hyperscalers and innovators. Partnerships with ServiceNow and Salesforce to enable digital transformation, Microsoft to leverage its Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) solutions, AWS (CapitaContact) to redefine contact centre capabilities, and Multiverse to train its employees to conduct AI projects successfully are now a reality.  

By embedding AI into its enterprise-wide ecosystem, Capita aims to deliver not only customer-first solutions and drive measurable results, but also ensure that agents are not overwhelmed by the demands of the workplace. Capita is committed to further bolstering its people-centred culture by leveraging emerging technologies to create next-level customer experience. AI is not the future; it is here and now. 

To find out more about how Capita are integrating AI into their services, please click here.

- Kala Iyer, Technology Managing Director, Capita