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Becoming More Human
The Financial Times had a headline recently about EY in the U.K. calling back junior consultants to the office as “AI increases the need for human skills.” Apparently, interpersonal skills must be developed in-office. And artificial intelligence has made those skills more valuable.
EY has published on this topic before. A recent report from the firm said, “leaders must measure success not by how much AI can do but by how much more human their people can become because of it.”
Before you scratch your head wondering how much more human your human staff can become, take a cue from banks who already are using AI. I was on a call recently with two bank CEOs to prepare for a panel discussion with them at Bank Director’s Bank Board Forum in Austin, Texas, from September 20 to 23. Although the conference covers a broad range of topics for CEOs and directors, including governance, audit and compensation, the conversation on this call turned to artificial intelligence.
Erik Beguin, the founder and CEO of $422 million Austin Capital Bank, also in Austin, said his organization used AI to cut the need for customer care representatives nearly in half. Granted, Austin Capital is unique. Most of its staff are technologists and one of its business lines is banking as a service.
AI at Austin Capital can answer simple, frequent questions that customers pose to its call center, leaving the human staff to handle more complex problems. Beguin says the bank monitors customer satisfaction with this system every day, and it has had good results. Industry-wide, customer service representatives get paid on the lower end of the bank pay scale. Austin Capital chose to turn that on its head. “We kept our best [customer service representatives] and we pay them more,” he says. “We end up with higher quality individuals who handle the exceptions.”
A recent job posting on Austin Capital’s website asked for customer support specialists who live the bank’s core values: people who take initiative, exhibit self-confidence with humility, are honest and “wicked smart,” which the job posting says means “intellectually and emotionally self-aware.”
I’m pretty sure a bot can’t be “emotionally self-aware.” If EY is right, then the future demands all of us to lean into our soft skills. For decades now, many organizations have been hiring and developing these skills for their leadership teams. But increasingly, they’re going to need them for everyone else, too.
• Naomi Snyder, editor-in-chief for Bank Director
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