Have a crack. Find out what works.
I'm interested in the sociotechnical side of work and society: how people, technology and organisations shape each other.
Opinions
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Who will lead the robot human armies of the future?
3 minWe're building teams of humans and AI agents. Who's training the people expected to lead them?
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Customer service is a layer cake
3 minGood customer service needs six layers of work and someone who understands how they fit together.
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All use of AI ends in a reorg
1 minAI will run into someone's job, budget or authority. Expect it. Prepare for it.
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Three is the magic number
3 minAI agents make useful skills easier to reach. I reckon the smallest team that can own a real outcome is shrinking.
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Buy the stack, build the evidence
3 minBuy the software when it does the job. Keep responsibility for finding out whether it helped.
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Not every support failure is a content problem
3 minAnother article won't fix a missing permission or a confusing product. Work out what failed first.
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Service and success are two doors into the same machine
3 minService and success don't need separate answers to the same question.
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Context engineering isn't enough
2 minIf your own team can't agree on the answer, stop asking the model to sort it out.
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Never don't invest in the content base
2 minIf the service runs on your answers, pay someone to keep them right.
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What AI service actually feels like from the other side
3 minA customer giving up isn't a saved contact. We need to stop counting it as one.
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Find the psychos
3 minFind the people who light up when everyone else is wary of change. Put them together, then make the organisation absorb what works.
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Feel the fear and do it anyway
2 minA proof of concept won't make the fear go away. Put AI into real work, small enough that you can catch mistakes and put them right.
About
I'm Ben Gilmore. Head of Product, Customer Technology at Xero. Based in Wellington.
I've spent more than ten years working on customer service technology. At Xero, I formed a team to work out what AI changes about the job.
I write about what I reckon we should do with it. These are my views, not statements from Xero.
Contact
Got a different view? I'm keen to hear it.
Reach me at hello@bengilmore.online.