I know it’s maybe a touch too early for one of those ‘predictions for 2025’ articles, but Labour’s first budget has acted as a catalyst for my Mystic Meg juices (not a great metaphor, I know).
“By the end of 2025 one will not use or visit a website without an agent doing a large part of the qualification work previously done by a real live person”
Largely, and correctly in my opinion, viewed as an attack on business owners, who appear to be perceived by Labour as not ‘working people’, the budget is going to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to replace the need to retain and hire new staff in the type of customer service areas where tech can be deployed with relatively little fuss, minimal disruption and a host of commercial benefits.
It would appear to me that those in charge live in a world entirely isolated from the realities of running a business. One does one’s best to recruit the right person for the right role, treat them as well as you can do, offer them a safe place to come to work, earn a living and hopefully make some new friends.
As the owner of the business, it is your responsibility to determine the strategy, execute it, hopefully win business, get paid for it and have enough money left over after you have paid all of your staff, your overheads and, of course, your taxes, for yourself.
At this, some are more successful than others.
All business owners are now faced with the following conundrum: do I hire, train and retain staff who are now more expensive than ever or do I develop, train and deploy tech that is significantly cheaper?
It is not a difficult question. For me, the most obvious area for this is frontline customer service, in whatever discipline or context that might be. Because I primarily work in the legal profession, my views and opinions are informed by that experience, but it can be readily extrapolated into other areas.
Let me outline two scenarios.
Scenario one
An individual is in need of legal assistance. She does some initial searching on the web and discovers a local firm that appears to offer services related to what she needs. She visits the firm’s website, does some initial reading but then calls that firm and speaks to the receptionist, who is neither legally trained or sales trained, and she begins to outline her issue.
The receptionist cuts across her and says, “I’m not exactly sure if we do that type of thing – I’ll see if someone is available to speak to you”.
The potential client is immediately patched through to a solicitor’s voicemail. She is not sure who this solicitor is, or what they do, but she leaves a message and hangs up.
She doesn’t hear back, so she resumes searching and repeats the above.
Scenario two
An individual is in need of legal assistance. She does some initial searching on the web and she discovers a local firm that appears to offer services related to what she needs. She visits the firm’s website and discovers an AI agent that has been trained on all of the firm’s web content, newsletters, blog posts and any other available supplementary materials on the firm’s areas of practice.
She asks the agent about her issue. The agent helpfully and empathetically replies and asks if she would like more information. She asks further questions and the agent, without any sense of urgency or need to get onto something else, replies, prompts and suggests a solicitor within the firm she should have a consultation with.
The agent then discusses potential fees, timescales etc and offers to make an appointment for an initial consultation in the fee-earner’s diary, to which it has immediate access, subject to a conflict check.
The agent makes the appointment, asks the potential client to please email the solicitor with any supplementary materials and signs off by saying ‘we look forward to helping you’. This agent does not take holidays, does not require National Insurance contributions, does not need a seat, desk, friends etc, and is always on.
Generational change
We have been working on our own solutions in this area because we believe this is going to represent the biggest change to the way in which the general public interact with professional services business for generations.
Some of the biggest providers of customer relationship management systems are already interfacing their relationship building and sales tech with agent interfaces ready and willing to be trained on the sales collateral, specification documents and knowledge bases of firms with a view to providing this exact visitor experience.
This technological development, combined with the punitive nature of the Labour budget, will transform the visitor experience to the extent that, in my opinion, by the end of 2025 one will not use or visit a website without an agent doing a large part of the qualification work previously done by a real live person.
