Last week, an article in the Financial Times asked whether the UK is finally showing signs of a productivity rebound – or if the optimism is more hope than evidence.
Amid the current hype, it can be tempting to read every AI-driven gain in output, speed or efficiency as proof that a wider economic transformation is taking hold. Like most things, there are elements of truth in all of this, but the position is always more nuanced and needs greater thought in its application.
Asking the right questions
Ask the wrong questions, and you risk getting misleading answers. For example, measuring how quickly a customer moves through a system or process can be a useful metric – and a proxy for customer effort – but you also risk losing sight of what truly matters to them. Was their problem resolved effectively? Did we even understand the problem? Did they feel heard and understood? Was there a genuine connection with your business that engenders the long-term engagement vital to retaining their custom?
In service, the real test is whether customers get what they need, when they need it, in a way that leaves them feeling satisfied with – and confident in – the organisation that served them. This is how trust is built. In meeting this challenge, the best organisations will deploy AI with intent and purpose.
Crucially, they will also keep asking the right questions long after implementation. Has the technology genuinely improved the customer’s experience and journey, or has it simply shifted the burden away from us and onto them? Has it freed up our people to serve customers more effectively, or put them under greater pressure to deal with the failures that automation can create or simply not solve?
There is a real risk that the human becomes lost and overwhelmed, and left feeling neither supported nor respected.
Retaining the human element
Of course, any decision to adopt new technology should be made in a thoughtful, intentional, and measured way, and should always be guided by what is best for the customer.
Customers don’t necessarily object to digital tools, AI or self-service – in many cases, they welcome them. What they do object to is feeling trapped in a system that fails to grasp the nature of their problem and makes it hard to reach a person when they need to. This comes up time and again in our UK Customer Satisfaction Index sector reports.
There is still a critical role for us humans – increasingly working alongside ‘AI colleagues’ – in delivering that empathy, understanding and a personal touch that technology alone cannot. Above all, are we losing sight of who controls what? We should be driving the ‘machine’ to do the customers’ and employees’ bidding – not the other way around! This requires careful thought to avoid ceding control to elements of the decision-making process that need human oversight.
Getting that balance right matters enormously. In this new operating environment, the organisations that thrive will be those that treat AI as one element of the service experience, not as a fix-all solution.
All of which brings us back to what productivity in service really means. Measuring by speed and efficiency alone misses the big picture. A problem solved quickly but only by half returns another call, another complaint, and potentially another customer lost. Real productivity lies in resolving problems effectively, and in many cases, that still requires human judgement.
As we adopt AI and other emerging technologies, the way to stay relevant, valued and profitable is to stay focused on the customer, measure what genuinely matters, and remember that technology works best when it strengthens, rather than replaces, the human experience.
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