From mainframes to spreadsheets and customer relationship management (CRM), technology-based innovations have changed the way we work to be more efficient, faster and connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, these tools have all required human input, interpretation and step-by-step guidance, including most AI-driven solutions \u2013 until now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not a new wave of technology to understand and incorporate, I hear you cry! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet, agentic AI isn\u2019t just another tool \u2013 it\u2019s a fundamental shift to how businesses in the UK operate today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unlike traditional automation that assists, AI agents act alongside humans to analyse, decide and execute autonomously, handling both routine, low-value work and high-value multistep tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead of AI being an extra layer of complexity, it\u2019s working with teams\u00a0 \u2013 empowering humans with digital labour<\/a> to collaborate and achieve growth together.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are five examples of how digital labour is already helping UK businesses grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Secret Escapes<\/a> offers discounts on luxury hotels and holidays across the globe, but it\u2019s up against rising customer demands and increased expectations.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Delivering personalised, high-quality support at scale \u2013 while maintaining the same headcount and excellent customer service \u2013 has never been more important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Digital labour, powered by AI agents, allows Secret Escapes to provide around-the-clock customer support \u2013 from handling last minute crib requests for a hotel room with self-service general inquiries to escalating more complex or sensitive queries to human representatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In just two weeks, Secret Escapes was able to build, test and launch their agent \u2013 compared to the 6 months it took to build and train the company\u2019s previous self-service bot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Capita<\/a> wanted to improve its labour-intensive recruitment process, to make its staffing, IT, and business process solutions more efficient in eight countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company spotted an opportunity to offer recruitment-as-a-service to help businesses staff up at higher volumes. But, to make this possible, Capita needed a way to quickly transform the recruitment process so it too can provide this service at scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enter a digital workforce. AI agents can autonomously take action on early-stage tasks, such as assessing thousands of resumes in seconds or enabling candidates to find jobs that fit their needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The move to supercharge its workforce with AI agents means Capita will be able to build a high-volume recruitment platform to accommodate around 10,000 people a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bionic helps 200,000+ UK small businesses compare, switch and renew business energy, insurance, broadband and more – making life easier for busy owners, so they can focus on running and growing their own businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company handles more than 30,000 calls every day, but such a high call volume of repetitive inquiries, such as meter readings and switch tracking and slow, manual processes were proving challenging \u2013 with increased wait times and over 7,000 voicemails piling up each month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bionic needed a better way to support customers and provide its call reps with the information they needed to jump in and help straight away, and its path to world-class customer service and operational efficiency began with agentic AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A limitless digital workforce now handles common customer enquiries automatically, day and night \u2013 pulling data directly and providing instant, accurate responses. Customer calls are intelligently routed to the right agent and AI agents handle routine queries, with Bionic projecting a 25% drop in average handle time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both Secret Escapes<\/a> and Bionic <\/a>are using AI agents to automate routine tasks and simplify workflows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s anticipated that Secret Escapes\u2019 AI agents will resolve 30% of customer requests through live chat autonomously \u2013 helping to achieve the goal of providing customers with high-quality experiences 24\/7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Automating routine tasks frees up customer service specialists to better serve Secret Escapes\u2019 customers by handling more complex and last-minute travel needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Bionic, agentic AI plugs into its CRM platform to retrieve customer details and respond with appropriate updates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With 50% of customer questions projected to be answered automatically by AI agents, not only does this free-up human support to handle more complex cases, but it also arms AI agents with information to get to the right answer, quickly. That\u2019s the Bionic way – automation where it makes sense, human support where it matters most!<\/p>\n\n\n\n At customer contact centres, employee turnover rates average between 30\u201340%, which can create staffing crunches for businesses and impact customer service \u2013 from quality to response times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n AI agents are helping Capita <\/a>ensure its customers maintain business continuity by filling roles before vacancies occur with time-to-hire analysis, monitoring staffing trends and predicting attrition.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Agentic AI will reason across millions of pieces of structured data, such as candidate details, and unstructured data, such as PDF resumes, to predict staffing needs based on trends: for example, how successful the job description was in attracting and retaining candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s no secret the UK is facing a productivity challenge, The OECD Economic Outlook from May 2024 projected the UK to be the worst-performing economy in the G7 next year. If left unchecked, the UK\u2019s productivity challenge could turn into a crisis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, agentic AI is already creating exciting opportunities for businesses \u2013 and the UK is perfectly placed to take advantage<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Salesforce, we\u2019ve been walking the walk as customer zero for our own technology, and right now we have the world\u2019s largest agentic AI deployment, powered by Agentforce, <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only are we seeing real results in how agentic AI is transforming our business, but also for our customers. Want to understand what agentic AI could do for your business?\u00a0 Use the Agentic AI ROI <\/strong><\/a>Calculator<\/a><\/strong> for bespoke insight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 5 ways to grow your business with digital labour from UK pioneers in agentic AI<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":12962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sf_justforyou_enable_alt":true,"optimizely_content_id":"69287d08e490319b5cb5f862","post_meta_title":"","ai_synopsis":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"sf_topic":[83,48,542],"sf_content_type":[437],"coauthors":[545],"class_list":["post-12960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","sf_topic-customer-experience","sf_topic-innovation","sf_topic-digital-labour","sf_content_type-blog"],"yoast_head":"\n1. Creating personalised experiences at scale with Secret Escapes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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2. Powering new offerings for Capita<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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3. Providing Bionic customers with 24\/7 support\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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4. Automating routine tasks for Secret Escapes and Bionic<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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5. Maintaining Capita\u2019s business continuity with predictions<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Growing UK businesses<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n