A year ago, I stepped into the newly created role of Chief AI & Product Officer at Capita.
I knew we were embarking on an ambitious journey. In just 12 months, we’ve undergone a period of rapid transformation - reshaping the services we deploy, empowering our people, and redefining what’s possible in BPO. Our collaboration with hyperscalers is accelerating our ability to deliver transformative solutions for clients, and our AI Catalyst Stack is redefining service delivery and operational excellence.
Rewriting the BPO playbook
What drew me to Capita was the scale of the opportunity. The BPO sector sits at the intersection of complex, high-volume processes and the need for continuous improvement, making it the ideal environment for agentic AI to drive meaningful change.
Traditionally, the sector has relied on large human workforces carrying out repetitive manual tasks. Today, we’re blending human expertise with agentic AI, freeing our people from routine work and empowering them to focus on oversight, empathy, and creative problem-solving.
When I joined, processes were heavily reliant on human effort, creating bottlenecks and limiting scalability. We now have over 200 live AI agents in production, and more than 8,000 colleagues actively using agents across major client contracts in pensions, health assessments and contact centres, as well as in our own operations across procurement, L&D, and project management. Routine tasks are now automated, freeing our people to focus on oversight, empathy, and creative problem-solving. Client demand reflects this shift: RFPs requesting AI-enabled delivery models are up 40%, and 15 major clients now include AI capabilities in their contracts.
The impact across public and private sector
The UK government is accelerating its adoption of AI to responsibly transform public services. Departments are under pressure to deliver more with less, and the opportunity lies in augmenting human capability, not replacing it. Our strategy focuses on using AI agents to remove friction, automate routine work, and allow skilled professionals to focus on what matters most: delivering outcomes for citizens, safely and transparently. Here are some examples of how we are already seeing improvements across for our clients:
Contact centres:
Whilst high call volumes can increase wait times and impact customer satisfaction and agent morale, our AI tool Agent Suite streamlines and improve the experience for both customers and agents. With Agent Suite, we have seen up to 20% improvement in average handling time, a 10-20% reduction in repeat contacts through improved first contact resolution, and 5-15 percentage point improvement in customer experience scores.
Pensions administration:
We built an agent that triages thousands of emails every day, can autonomously respond creating tailored and personalised responses or route emails to the right team for resolution, cutting response times by 60 percent and freeing up our people to focus on empathy and resolution.
Document verification:
Verification took on average five days, slowing service delivery and creating compliance risks. Document processing is now 80% faster compared to manual verification, achieving 95% accuracy in verification decisions. The solution also manages complex identity checks across multiple data sources and has been scaled to handle more than 10,000 verifications each month.
Across our own operations, productivity improvements have reached up to 50%, and feedback from our teams is clear: people feel better equipped to deliver exceptional outcomes for clients.
Milestones
Earlier this year, we established the AI Catalyst Lab, our innovation engine dedicated to fostering a culture where experimentation is encouraged, learning is continuous, and responsible innovation is paramount. Some of the key wins include:
- Launched 40 pilot projects within the first 9 months.
- Moved 15 solutions from concept to production.
- Trained 400 employees in AI literacy.
- Embedded responsible AI checkpoints in our development lifecycle.
The Lab’s iterative approach – test, learn, improve, repeat – has become central to how we operate, with ‘Capita as client zero’ ensuring every solution is proven internally before client deployment.
To complement this effort, we launched the AI Catalyst Stack, an integrated platform leveraging technology from the likes of AWS, Microsoft, Salesforce, and ServiceNow. It enables end-to-end automation of business processes by combining process observability, rapid AI build and deployment, secure orchestration, and trusted data management.
The framework enables our teams to serve our customers and their customers in a structured way, putting the customer’s needs first and working together to derive better outcomes. In early days, we are seeing a reduced AI solution deployment time from six weeks to 10 days, the ability to orchestrate hundreds of concurrent AI agents across multiple workflows and significant number of processes being fully automated, with human intervention required in only 8% of cases.
We have also launched five innovative products this year, designed to transform operations and enhance service delivery. Each product leverages AI and automation to drive efficiency, improve outcomes, and support large-scale programmes:
- Contact Centre of the Future, an agile and intelligent solution for customer engagement.
- Capita Recruit, a fully managed recruitment platform powered by AI to streamline processes and reduce manual effort.
- Capita Intelligent Communications, which enables seamless, multi-channel communication and improves citizen experience.
- Capita Document Verification, an AI-driven tool that accelerates document analysis and fraud detection.
- and Capita Learning Technologies, which delivers scalable learning solutions across complex systems.
Trust through transparency
Trust through transparency
Our clients and regulators expect clear governance and accountability for AI systems, and we’ve made this a cornerstone of our approach. Every solution we deploy includes embedded policy controls, robust data-handling safeguards, and meaningful human oversight. Our AI Charter sets out our commitment to harnessing AI responsibly and ethically, embedding our corporate values - customer first, fearless innovation, collaboration, and inclusivity - at the heart of every decision and deployment. By prioritising trust, transparency, and governance, we aim for AI to create genuine value for people, businesses, and society.
Employee impact
Our transformation is not only improving operational efficiency but is also enhancing the employee experience. As a people-first organisation, we have equipped our teams with cutting edge technology to complement their day-to-day and to develop their professional skills to then appropriately serve our customers. We’ve delivered over 260,000 hours of training and over 430 colleagues have enrolled in the AI Apprenticeship. With over 5,000 Copilot 365 licences deployed, and 17,000 Copilot training hours delivered, users are saving on average 48 minutes per day. Engagement scores have risen by nine points in AI-enabled teams, and the time spent on meaningful work has grown from 40% to 65%. These changes demonstrate how AI is empowering people to focus on higher-value activities that require judgement, empathy, and creativity.
Looking ahead
Capita is targeting to become the first AI-enabled BPO, globally. Next year, our goal is to scale AI deployments across more operations, setting a new benchmark for the industry. The integration of agentic AI with human expertise is redefining service delivery – enhancing productivity, improving outcomes, and creating more meaningful work for people. I am excited to continue leading this journey, driving innovation, transparency, and responsible AI adoption across the sector.
Find out more about our solutions leveraging artificial intelligence:
Sameer Vuyyuru
Chief AI and Product Officer
Sameer is responsible for overseeing and accelerating Capita’s AI, product and solution strategy and leveraging our hyperscaler relationships. Delivering scalable, repeatable AI solutions underpins Capita’s strategy to deliver better client outcomes. Sameer brings over 25 years’ experience in the global technology sector including, most recently, his role at Amazon Web Services (AWS) as Director, Global Solutions and Partnerships, Telco and Edge Strategy, as well as senior roles with Comtech, Semtech, Intersil and Texas Instruments.
