At CCA’s Raising the Bar Annual Summit in Manchester, QStory hosted an industry panel on a critical mandate for modern operations: creating true workforce agility.
- Jessica Highmoor-Broughton – Optimisation Manager | Planning, Direct Line Group (subsidiary of Aviva)
- Daniel Simmonds – Workforce Platforms & Optimisation Lead, Barclays UK
- Rachel Reed – Solutions Consultant, QStory
- Sharon Johnston – Managing Director, CCA Global
- Barry Jones – Product Director, QStory
Here are the key strategic takeaways on how leading organisations are shifting from rigid operational models to human-centric, adaptable workforces.
1. The End of Multi-Year Transformation Planning
Traditional 3-to-5-year transformation programmes are officially obsolete. In the time it takes to build a business case, design a future state, and deploy a new platform, underlying technology and customer expectations have already shifted.
The most resilient organisations will not be those that attempt to predict the future, but those built to dynamically respond to it. Operations must abandon rigid roadmaps in favour of continuous micro-adaptations, focused strictly on long-term customer outcomes rather than static tech implementations.
“For years, we’ve all been very comfortable with the idea of the big transformation programme – to find the future states, build the business case, get everybody aligned, spend 2 or 3 years transforming the operation, launch the new platform, and celebrate. And almost immediately, or even during this process, a new technology arrives, customer expectations change, employees start to expect something different, the market changes, and suddenly the future state that we spend billions and several years designing isn’t the future anymore.”
Barry Jones, Product Director at QStory
2. Shift Metrics from Schedule Compliance to Agent Empowerment
Legacy metrics like Average Handling Time (AHT) and rigid shrinkage targets measure operational activity, not value creation. Customers do not experience planning cycles or green ticks on a dashboard; they simply experience the quality of their interaction.
Modern operations are shifting toward flexibility and autonomy as primary performance drivers:
- Automating Operational Friction: At Direct Line Group, manual support for schedule flexibility consumed significant management bandwidth. By partnering with QStory, they deployed AI to automate schedule-change requests and remove manual workflows.
- Driving Natural Adherence: Providing agents with real autonomy over their working schedules naturally improved engagement, adherence, and customer outcomes.
“When you look at the metrics and the way that you measure your business, your customers don’t see that. They see a company they need to speak to, the organisation, not green ticks and graphs on the planning cycle. You need to approach these with more of a customercentric lens on how you approach your planning cycle.”
Daniel Simmonds, Workforce Platforms & Optimisation Lead, Barclays UK
“That is what we have spent the last year doing with QStory – how we can use AI to support better decision making and give agents true empowerment over their working life.”
Jessica Highmoor-Broughton, Optimisation Manager I Planning, Direct Line Group.
3. The Evolving Human Role: Script-Readers to Problem-Solvers
As AI successfully handles routine conversations, the workforce structure will fundamentally change. The human agent’s role will shift away from process-following and script-reading, moving instead toward complex problem-solving and relationship-building. There may be fewer agents in the future, but they will be significantly more valuable.
“I’ve always been very passionate in the planning world about planners being analysts rather than administrators. And I think for contact centre agents, it’s going to be about not being script readers or process followers, but instead becoming problem solvers and relationship builders with customers instead.”
Rachel Reed, Solutions Consultant at QStory
Meanwhile, AI will play a key role in supporting human agents, for example, through AI-based live call transcripts or proactive knowledge retrieval, enabling agents to actively listen to customers and focus on delivering better customer outcomes.
Because simple interactions will be automated, the queries left for human agents will be highly complex and emotional, requiring significant handholding. Organisations must proactively support their staff through this shift to prevent severe compassion fatigue as the nature of their daily conversations intensifies.
“If we automate all the basic tasks and leave only the complex ones, that has a real impact on colleagues. It’s something we need to prepare for and support them through. While the customer is front and foremost, we can’t forget the colleagues who might be struggling in the background trying to deal with it all.”
Sharon Johnston, Managing Director at CCA Global
4. Guarding Against Customer-Disruptive AI
Implementing AI simply for the sake of it disrupts the customer journey. An example used by the panel included pop-up boxes on websites with chatbots, which are often difficult or impossible to remove from the screen and instead prevent the customer from accessing the part of the website they actually want.
“Whenever we are using AI or wanting to implement AI, what we really need to ask ourselves is how is the customer going to use this and how is the customer going to interact with this and are we going are we getting them to the outcome they want to get to or are we disrupting them?”
Jessica Highmoor-Broughton, Optimisation Manager I Planning, Direct Line Group
Organisations must enforce two critical deployment rules:
- Outcome Focus: Evaluate every AI touchpoint by asking whether it helps the customer achieve their specific goal faster or if it simply adds friction.
- Guaranteed Human Off-Ramps: Never lock users into “agentic AI cycles.” While digital-first routes appeal to younger audiences, immediate access to a human agent remains vital for vulnerable or less tech-literate demographics.
Summary: Culture Beats Prediction
Ultimately, the organisations that win in the AI era will not be the ones that accurately predict the future, but the ones that build a culture capable of responding to it. Success requires avoiding locking into yesterday’s assumptions and creating enough flexibility to absorb new technology as it arrives.
“Yes, let’s talk about AI. But perhaps a bigger question for all of us is whether we built organisations that are ready for what AI brings and whatever is coming after AI.”
Barry Jones, Product Director at QStory