Building a Human Centric AI Strategy

Mark Hayward, Head of AI at Lowell discusses the implementation of AI within debt purchase and collections. The discussion examines organisational readiness, risk appetite, regulation, governance, business cases, employee adoption and the limitations created by legacy technology. Rather than focusing on speculative AI capabilities, the conversation concentrates on deployment experience: automated call summarisation, quality assessment, voice AI, process automation and the need to choose between AI and simpler automation technologies. It also examines how rapid technological change affects investment decisions and why organisations may need to accept shorter technology lifecycles. A central theme is the emerging balance between people and machines. Routine activities and straightforward customer transactions can increasingly be automated, while human agents remain important for complex conversations, vulnerability and circumstances where customers need meaningful human interaction. The discussion concludes that AI is likely to reshape processes, support functions and employee skill requirements, rather than simply replace existing contact-centre operations. More insights and videos at https://www.ro-ar.com