I recently spoke to a team leader who said: 'We've just started with AI assist. Quite useful, but I have no idea where it will end. And what I should tell my team later.' That stuck. It's time to address the elephant in the room, says Maarten Oosterhoff.

 

In brief:

• The work of customer contact employees is becoming increasingly automated
• Automation affects the quality of the job package, but also the job prospects
• Leaders need to openly discuss this with their teams

“80% of customer contacts are against 2029 handled by GenAI” Gartner said a while ago. Ad Nederlof stated last year: “Within five years up to three quarters fewer agents”. And last week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei took it a step further: “AI is on the verge of taking over 50% of entry-level jobs to disappear within five years.” The percentages vary, but these types of messages continue to follow one another.

The elephant in the room

AI is hot. Every tech party offers solutions, every consultancy firm points out the need for AI policy and strategy, and AI is prominently on the agenda at every event. With the promise: faster, better, cheaper customer contact. AI is already superior in the field of quickly and effectively retrieving and offering knowledge and quickly summarizing conversations. AI is only developing further.

And honestly: it is also fantastic what is already possible. I also like working with it myself. From CustomGPTs to fast analyses. But somewhere along the way we forgot something. Namely: our employees. Even if the predictions come out at 'only' 50%: that is still half the work and therefore also: half the employees. We have to do something with that.

Taboo

AI is transforming the contact center. What does that really mean? Not only will we be doing work with fewer and fewer people, but these people will also be doing different work. What do you say to your knowledge worker who hears and experiences that AI is doing its job better and faster? How do your employees get to know AI? Only as a 'work grabber'? Or also as a brother-in-arms?

There is a tendency in the sector to avoid developments. But soon half of your team will no longer be needed. That is the uncomfortable truth. And we prefer not to talk about it.

Employees are (not) gold

Because who do you want to keep? No one likes to have bad news conversations. We prefer to claim that our 'employees are our gold'. And suppose we do dare to say it, what do you actually say to your employees? And won't our best people be the first to leave? Incidentally, the latter also applies to team leaders and customer contact managers. Are we afraid that we may not be interesting or captivating enough for our most talented people? And should we, as leaders, perhaps change ourselves?

What remains of 'valuable work'?

A common argument is: with the use of AI, 'only the valuable work remains'. That sounds well-intentioned, but is not well thought out. Because employees are already doing that valuable work - and no one is waiting to spend eight hours a day on complex, emotionally demanding conversations. Certainly not against the current customer contact employee salary.

Being empathetic, solution-oriented and involved for eight hours is comparable to a day full of Zoom meetings – think back to the corona period. It may seem efficient, but in practice it quickly leads to a tsunami of absenteeism and turnover. That is not a sustainable model, but a form of overexploitation. Especially if you apply this policy generically to all employees, regardless of their talents and work preferences.

What is often overlooked: the so-called 'less valuable' customer contact - such as simple questions, summarizing conversations or registering contact reasons - is actually a welcome change for many employees. It contributes to work variety and mental balance.

What do we actually mean by valuable work?

The developments in AI require a redefinition of what valuable work is. Which conversations do we find truly valuable – and therefore not suitable for automation? In my opinion, these are the conversations that are unique, because of their context or complexity. For example, situations that occur rarely or in which the question does not lend itself to a standard channel, such as a My Environment for less digitally skilled seniors.

Conversations that directly influence brand loyalty or customer trust also belong in this category. Think of (pre)sales conversations, communication with VIP customers or the retention of customers who are at risk of switching. These are contact moments with impact – not only for the individual customer, but also for the organization as a whole.

What does that mean for your team?

If you want to make maximum impact with human interaction, that requires a different kind of employee – with different selection criteria, better salaries, and less emphasis on efficiency. Employees must show ownership from A to Z, have the mandate to really solve and tackle causes. The goal should be: real first contact resolution. But you don't achieve that by simply assigning 'the better conversations' to your current team.

Skills for now and in the future

This brings us to the question: what should customer contact employees have in-house – now and in the near future?

First, the human skills in which we still surpass AI for the time being: listening well, recognizing emotions, choosing the right tone and being able to quickly switch in style and approach. Employees also need to have mental resilience: staying calm under pressure, dealing with setbacks, and being able to translate process findings into concrete improvements – for example within project groups.

In addition, the rise of AI requires a new skillset. Employees must not only be able to use AI as a smart assistant (for repetitive questions, analyses, summaries or next-best-actions), but also be able to train AI tools, supervise them and – if necessary – make themselves partly redundant. That requires courage and self-confidence.

Those who are agile move along with changes: new systems, customer expectations, work processes or team compositions. It also means being able to collaborate better within the organization – transcending departmental boundaries and hierarchies, bypassing bureaucracy, representing customer interests and informally coordinating with other departments. In other words: get the job done!

Redesign or transform?

You won't get employees with the above competencies LSD training or a 2-day onboarding. Even e-learning is no longer sufficient. These skills require people with self-knowledge, organizational sense, trust, courage and vulnerability. And people who are given the space to learn.

This requires leaders who can let go of the old way of organizing (managing by numbers, optimizing, redesigning bits and 'telling how to do it'). We can't get any further with that now. Instead, we need to learn to let go! Give trust and guide your employees instead of Excel management or AHT management. More leadership, less management. Managers will also have to reinvent all kinds of things. Recruitment, selection, onboarding, team composition, training and attention to people. AI, including all associated consequences and effects, requires a transformation. We need to reshape ourselves, our teams and the entire customer contact sector. That doesn't start tomorrow or the day after, but today.

Solution? No. Contours? Yes.

I don't have a ready-made solution. But I do see contours and directions emerging. Teams have to work differently. More hybrid, not only in terms of location, but also in terms of activities. I can see employees doing 50% production (4 hours of contact with customers per day) and 50% other tasks per day. Think of continuous improvement: they know better than anyone what the questions are about and where they come from. When I worked at Booking.com, we introduced an innovation lab. There, customer contact employees had dual roles: both executive and focused on analyzing, changing, testing, discussing. In addition to high motivation, this also resulted in a high turnover, but that was positive turnover, largely caused by internal growth. In my opinion, that is what the customer contact team is intended for: a breeding ground for talent.

Start today, but with what? You can already make your team more AI-aware. You can let them play around with ChatGPT. For example, rewriting FAQs in collaboration with AI. Or improving the onboarding training with AI. In some organizations, the AI ​​café is already a concept. Every other week they plan an hour with a drink and a bite to eat to discuss and try out AI matters together. Or think of a presentation, a workshop, or working together on an AI project. You don't have to start big and sweeping to learn new skills.

Change manager!

Consciously in two words: 'Change' and 'manager'. That's where it starts. There is enough to read and learn about, for example, communication during change processes. One of the most important things is: take your team along in the entire change. People do not quickly choose change themselves, but they are quite willing to go along. In other words: 'people can and want to change, but they are not changed', I once learned from Remco Claassen.

“If you don't change, you will be changed”

The elephant in the room is not a threat. It is an invitation to say goodbye to old certainties – and embrace new forms of work, leadership and development.
Let’s be honest: most AI strategies I see are primarily technical in nature. The real question is not whether AI has an impact; it already has. The real challenge is culture, people and leadership.

The question is therefore mainly: what are you going to do? Are you going to wait until the MT decides that your team will be halved? Or are you going to take steps now?

 

Martin Oosterhoff is an independent senior customer service manager

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