Capita Experience is leaning hard into AI while keeping people at the centre of service. We sat down with Kala Iyer, Head of Transformation at Capita Experience, who leads multi-programme CX change across the division, to discuss how her teams balance automation with empathy, what “good” looks like in 2025, and the tech stack behind it.
Q: Kala, when you talk about “humanising” digital CX, what do you mean in practice?
Kala Iyer: For me, humanising CX means making digital interactions feel more personal, empathetic and emotionally intelligent — so that customers can feel understood, valued and supported as they would have been by a human on the other end. It's about blending the efficiency of digital with the warmth of human connection.
Q: Where does AI already make a measurable difference in your contact centres?
Kala: Two places: real-time guidance during an interaction and quality improvement after it. Our AgentSuite does both. “Agent Assist” understands customer intent and root cause in real time, surfaces troubleshooting steps, provides battlecards to improve sales and knowledge, and then auto-generates call summaries and transcripts—reducing average handling time, enabling sales conversion and reducing after-call work. “Call Sight” analyses recordings at scale to automate QA and feed targeted coaching. Early roll-outs have shown double-digit gains in first-time resolution and material cuts in handling time and post-call admin.The real benefit is being seen through the data analytics created through automated QA that can be fed into continuous improvement channels
Q: What platform choices have you made to deliver this at scale?
Kala: We’ve launched CapitaContact, our integrated, omni-channel agent platform built on Amazon Connect. It gives us a single pane for voice, chat and SMS, and because it leverages AWS’s AI capabilities, we can stand up improvements super quickly—like smarter routing that prioritises vulnerable customers. We’ve piloted it with UK public-sector clients and are rolling it out widely. Importantly, AgentSuite is telephony-agnostic, so we can deploy alongside a client’s existing tech as needed and not be constrained / tied down to one platform.
Q: Isn’t there a risk that more automation erodes empathy?
Kala: Yes, absolutely, but only if you automate the wrong things. We avoid this by designing for emotion and not just the tasks.By keeping the ‘ Human-in-the-loop", we let AI handle summaries, proposing best actions and drafting notes but is equally adept at seamlessly handing off to humans when emotions or complexity arises. Within Callsight, we use sentiment and compliance insights to coach empathy back into the journey where it’s missing.
Q: How are you extending automation beyond the agent desktop?
Kala: Through a human-plus-AI model. We recently brought controllable AI voice agents into parts of the journey where customers just want fast, accurate completion—think balance checks or simple updates, —while ensuring a warm handoff to people when the situation is complex or sensitive. It’s about right-channel, right-moment – when designed with empathy in mind, automation can actually amplify human care by freeing people to do what machines can’t: listen, empathise and build trust.
Q: What governance do you put around AI so it remains trustworthy?
Kala: Three layers. First, guardrails by design: redaction, role-based access and audit trails for Generative AI outputs. Second, human-in-the-loop: agents approve any final action or message in sensitive workflows. Third, continuous QA: Call Sight flags empathy, compliance and outcome risks so leaders can intervene with coaching, policy updates or product fixes. We also choose platforms with strong enterprise controls
Q: Internally, how are you equipping colleagues to work alongside AI?
Kala: That’s an excellent question and very forward-thinking. Equipping employees to work with AI, not against it is one of the most important leadership challenges right now. The cultural piece matters as much as the tech: A key aspect of our digital transformation is not just to deploy tech but to ensure that our employees appreciate the benefits and responsibilities that come alongside – we run regular hands on workshops and drop in sessions so colleagues can experiment using real tools, appreciate the change that is taking place, learn when to trust or not and have a community of AI Champions who enable the adoption of the tools that is tailor made for the customer journeys, share best practices and collaborate.
Q: What KPIs tell you you’re balancing automation and empathy well?
Kala: A blend of hard and human indicators: First-time resolution, handling time and post-call admin on one side; customer emotion, complaint reduction and agent wellbeing on the other. With AgentSuite and CapitaContact in place we’ve seen >20% reductions in handling time and 15–30% lifts in first-time resolution in early deployments and improvements in CSAT. If automation rises but empathy scores fall or our agents feel stressed, we would have missed the mark.
Q: Where do you still draw a bright line—“humans only”?
Kala: Anything involving vulnerability, distress or life impact—for example bereavement, safeguarding or service failures with serious consequences. Digital can triage and prepare the agent, but the conversation belongs to a skilled human to do it right. Our routing explicitly prioritises those cases.
Q: Finally, what’s your one-sentence advice to CX leaders wrestling with AI?
Kala: Lead with the human element first – use AI to enhance empathy and not just efficiency. The right combination can bolster customer and employee trust that no algorithm can replace.
Kala Iyer
Head of Transformation, Capita Experience
