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Well, hello everyone. And it’s a time of reflection as we exit the old year 2025 and into the new year 2026. Natasha, you and I were having a conversation, but why don’t you introduce yourself? We’ve spoken before, but why don’t you introduce yourself to everyone?
Thanks, Annemie. My name is Natasha Barnard. I am an independent consultant in the financial services health insurance industry, about 20 plus years in financial services across three continents. And yes, thank you for the opportunity to have a little bit of a chat about AI trends, etc.
I think what you’ve been doing recently is doing some work on, even yourself developing further in the space, but that’s made you reach some really interesting conclusions, which I think two of them in particular are very relevant? What are they?
I think the two things that stand out the most to me and it’s I think a lot to do with what I see on LinkedIn, what I’m hearing on social media and in articles is the one school that AI is going to take your job and AI is going to replace a whole bunch of people etc. Which is to a certain extent. But I think the gap that I’m seeing, and I’m not seeing a lot of discussions around that, and maybe it’s just some of the things that are happening behind the scenes, is how are companies looking and grading the jobs that they’ve currently got people in, or the job families, and what are the minimum AI level requirements? I think there’s a lot of focus on contact center or service center agents with the agentic AI replacements of those types of roles. But I think if you look at everyone from middle management upwards and then down again, what is the AI understanding and skill level that people are needing? A lot of focus on data, getting the data sorted out. But if you don’t ensure that you’ve got an understanding of what you’re expecting people to do with or have an AI skill at a certain level, I think you might miss out on some of those really important cost saving opportunities that is also being touted as one of the biggest benefits of AI implementation. So in summary, it’s really around making sure that you have people in the right roles, focused on the right level and more actually trained to the right level of AI proficiency, depending on their role and what they’re doing and a lot of businesses are not really reflecting on that. I’d say yes and I think just is anyone, I’ve not seen a lot of detail on this, is anyone looking at what, so who’s grading these jobs? Because I haven’t seen job descriptions where they specifically say that except when you’re maybe a developer, where they say, needs to have a proficiency in these various types of AI solutions.
But you were making an interesting point though, which is we all know that our employees are playing with AI anyway. So, you know, it’s not that they’re more privately or I mean, even in at the workplace, they’re using it. I’ve seen so many examples of that. So it’s how do you integrate all of that? Right. And then upskill them to the right level for their role. Agreed. And I think the big thing that companies are getting a little bit concerned about is that now your employees will also want to learn at their own pace and sometimes there’s a lot of people who pay for the paid versions of, I don’t know, Chad, GPT and some of those models. But then also they need to understand that when you start putting in confidential information or maybe you want to do a piece of analysis, that’s out there. So ensuring that anyone in your company understands what is the privacy concerns. Any type of data that you put out there is then available. So I think it’s again, I guess, in that context, this topic of AI policy, AI security and the like.
So that was the first interesting insight, but I thought the other one was even more interesting. You told me a story of how people in a community where you live, older people actually starting to use AI, which then started bringing home the second really key insight. of the last year and for the coming year?
Yes, and I think we need to understand that everyone is using AI, not just people of a certain generation. If I look at some of my neighbours, many of them are a little bit older and are spending a lot of time or money in the healthcare system, understanding the treatments and those types of things. And what I’ve seen is, and I’ve had a few conversations where I’ve helped a few people, is they want to understand in plain English what does the diagnosis mean? What does the medication mean? And if they have certain symptoms and they’ve been to the doctor but the doctor hasn’t been able to help them reduce those symptoms, how do they educate themselves and not just blindly get this information? But I think the biggest thing that I’ve seen them use it for is it then help them to prepare what type of questions to ask the health care providers. And then also, you know, some really interesting prompts to understand how diet can affect some of the medications, et cetera. So it’s also interesting, like, even though there’s a big focus on getting your employees more up skilled in AI, we need to understand that our customers are using and learning to use AI every single day. If I just take myself, I bought a very expensive vacuum cleaner recently that had an issue.
I used the regular customer service channels which weren’t that successful and then I finally just set it to chat GPT, find out where’s the email address that I could send my complaint to, research the laws that are my rights, et cetera, within delivery and return dates, and write me a return complaint and a request for a full replacement. that’s usually something that will probably, you’d sit on it for a few days, find information, get it done. It something that didn’t even take 10 minutes. And it actually had a positive outcome. And it was a very simplistic, I know this is simplistic example, but this is how people are using, or using, know, educating themselves and using it to take away tasks. Because if I think about it, this is something that took me 10 minutes, whereas I had struggled with three different Customer support service engagements. And then two weeks later, just packed, they sent me an email back with a few questions.
And then I packed up the old vacuum and two weeks later, brand new vacuum was delivered. So two key insights, I guess one as it relates to employees, as we move into this new year, let’s not forget to also pay attention to the need to ensure that people have the appropriate level of AI proficiency depending on their role and what you require of them. And then probably build it into everything from job families, job descriptions, promotion, requirements I guess and then the second one which I really think we often forget right is the this one about the customer. Yes. And that your customers are using AI so they’re using it to engage with you. Yeah. And it’s obvious but I think we forget it both of those. Yeah and then are you considering how that is impacting the design customer experience that you’ve currently got in place? Exactly exactly and I think all of the well both those points actually then form part of a coin, right? Two sides of a coin somehow. Yes. Customer and the employee. Good. Well, thank you, Natasha. I wish you a lovely new year and I’m sure we’ll speak to each other again. Yes. Thank you, Annemie. Take care. Bye.
