The future of service is human and AI. Here’s how we’re building for it.

At Simplyhealth, we’ve spent the last 153 years improving access to healthcare for all in the United Kingdom. We do this by helping our members find and fund great and affordable everyday healthcare, so they can flourish. Our purpose hasn’t changed, but how we deliver on it is evolving.

Today’s customers expect fast, friendly, and consistent support — no matter the question, regardless of channel. In the healthcare field, we’re often supporting people during moments of stress or uncertainty, which means our tone matters just as much as our answers. Every interaction must feel warm, clear, and human, even when it’s something as simple as resetting a password.

Meeting those expectations isn’t easy when you have millions of members to support. With agentic AI, though, we can provide the speed people expect without losing the personal touch that defines our service. Agentforce, our agentic AI solution, can handle high volumes more efficiently - a critical piece of the puzzle with the potential to completely redefine customer service for the better.

With repetitive tasks increasingly handled by AI, service reps have more time for the human moments that make the biggest difference, for our customers and our people. Reaching the promise of this potential won’t happen by accident, though. It’ll demand a new approach to hiring, training, and tech design. At Simplyhealth, we’re just getting started.

Here are four ways we’re building a future where humans and AI work side by side to deliver faster, kinder, more meaningful service:

We believe the reps of the future won’t need admin skills and a script alone. They’ll need emotional intelligence. Curiosity. The judgment to know when to slow down, listen, and go deeper.

That’s why we’re evolving how we hire and train — seeking out those human qualities now and building learning programs around them. Our teams need the skills, confidence, and support to handle the more nuanced, emotionally charged conversations that only humans can.

For example, one member’s husband had a stroke and faced a 27-week wait for physiotherapy. Because Agentforce is handling repetitive, high-volume requests, our live team had more time and bandwidth to help this member get everything settled. Not only did we help them find and access care in a timely manner, we also helped them fund the treatment. That’s the kind of work our people are empowered to do when Agentforce is handling claims status updates and answering basic questions about our products.

We didn’t implement Agentforce for innovation’s sake. We did it to remove the friction in the customer journeys that keeps people from getting the care they need. We also removed the more menial tasks that keep our teams from doing work that’s meaningful.

Our guiding question was simple: How can we make every interaction faster, easier, and more empathetic without losing the personal touch that defines our brand?

That meant grounding our AI strategy in real-world problems. Where were our teams bogged down in repetitive work? Where were members feeling stuck or confused? Only once we had those answers did we look at how technology could help.

By focusing on the gaps that matter, we’ve built a system where AI advances our purpose and where people and AI can each play to their strengths.

Non-agentic AI now takes care of many of the repetitive tasks that used to slow us down. With generative AI in Agentforce Service, email replies that once took 12 minutes now take just 1.5.

When people and AI work in sync like this, the impact is literally life changing. One member came to us after waiting four years through the National Health Service for a neurodiversity assessment for their child. Our team was able to get them in to see a top provider within a month. This is the work that energizes us, and AI gives us more time for it.

Great service isn’t just about speed or accuracy. It’s also about how you make people feel — especially during vulnerable moments involving health or finances.

That’s why we’re intentional about how Agentforce communicates. We’re working closely with our teams to ensure our AI agent doesn’t just work like us — it sounds like us. We choose clear, familiar language. We avoid jargon. For example, we train our service reps to say “question,” not “query,” and now we’re making sure Agentforce does the same.

Our tone of voice is clear, conversational, and rooted in empathy. Whether someone is speaking to a live rep or to Agentforce, the experience should feel supportive, thoughtful, and kind. It’s part of how we simplify access to care and ensure our brand voice comes through in every interaction.

When AI becomes part of the team, every touchpoint — human or not — should feel like it’s coming from the same trusted source.

The real power of AI is that it frees people to focus on what matters most — connecting, empathizing, and making a real difference. At Simplyhealth, we’re creating a future where AI and humans work side by side to deliver faster, kinder, and more meaningful care — one conversation at a time.