AI-Powered Leadership: Turning Insights into Customer-Centric Action

The utilities sector ranked lowest in the latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI), reinforcing the urgent need for sustained improvement.

Many companies are turning to AI to bridge this gap - but with the risk of dehumanising interactions, how can leaders ensure a more balanced approach?

AI is already widely used in customer operations, from virtual assistants that deflect demand to real-time analytics that support advisors. Yet, the way AI is applied can make or break the customer experience. Rather than relying solely on automation, we’ve been testing a different approach - one that empowers leaders to drive high performance while keeping the human element at the core of service delivery.

In this article, we explore how Large Language Models and Generative AI can transform operational leadership. By improving visibility, eliminating ambiguity, and aligning teams with strategic goals, AI offers a level of insight that traditional ‘go see’ methods cannot match.

As Ofgem raises the bar for service standards, this approach can help organisations stay ahead, drive excellence, and differentiate themselves in a competitive market.

Shedding Light on Leadership: Gaining Full Visibility with AI

Operational management is inherently complex, with multiple teams, systems, and processes interacting in real time. This makes it difficult for senior leadership to gain a clear, immediate, and holistic view of what’s happening - especially when it comes to how key messages and strategic objectives are being interpreted and actioned by those closest to the customer.

Full transparency into what managers and leaders across your organisation are discussing with their teams isn’t easily achievable through traditional observation methods. As a result, leadership quality is often assumed rather than measured, and validating how well business objectives are being translated into action at scale becomes nearly impossible.

Leadership itself is a complex skill that takes time to develop. Ensuring managers have the right support and guidance requires significant investment in both time and effort. Without the right tools, businesses risk misalignment, lost opportunities, and inconsistent execution of strategy.

By leveraging BFY’s Large Language Model, organisations can quickly surface key themes in leadership conversations across all levels and functions. Combined with AI-driven insights, psychometric analysis, and targeted coaching, businesses can rapidly identify leadership development needs and accelerate the growth of high-performing teams.

Key questions to consider:

• How confident are you that operational leaders are translating key objectives into clear, actionable direction for their teams?
• Do you have full visibility into how messages and objectives are being adapted to suit different operational functions?
• Are you aware of how your leaders are sharing insights and driving discussions within their teams?
• Is every leader in your organisation aligned with your company’s vision and strategic goals?
• Do they have the skills and capabilities needed to effectively drive business performance?

Opportunities to Empower Operational Leadership with AI

By harnessing Large Language Models and Generative AI, organisations can consolidate data from multiple sources, creating a real-time, holistic view of operations. This enables leaders to quickly identify key discussion themes, uncover opportunities, and drive informed decision-making at scale.

Large scale real time insight

AI enables the rapid identification of opportunities and pain points while uncovering emerging themes and trends within operational conversations. This provides a clear, real-time view of what customers concerns are, highlighting actionable insights for the business to enhance customer service, eliminating the delays of traditional manual analysis.

For example, feeding hundreds of calls into our model can allow themes, trends and key pain points to be highlighted on the back of a product launch, or change.

Data driven decision making

AI empowers you to quickly identify negative sentiments or potential risks within the operation, enabling proactive decision making and swift action before problems escalate.

Access to this rich, real-time data - such as the percentage of time spent discussing specific topics like debt, payments, KPIs - allows operational leads to address issues proactively, moving beyond reactive firefighting. By spotting risks early, the operation can minimise potential damage to brand reputation, financial losses, and customer satisfaction scores.

Building a customer-centric culture

Understanding what customers are saying in real time is crucial for maintaining high service standards. The ability to quantify KPIs discussed by leaders, and understand how their conversations influence customer service, is essential to foster a culture of responsiveness and continuous improvement.

For example, using AI to ask "What are my customers saying?" allows emerging issues to be addressed before they escalate and affect service quality. This includes areas like call wait times, specific call drivers, and complaint categorisation, all of which can be tackled proactively to maintain high standards.

Aligning communication and strategy

Disparities in leadership communication across teams and operational areas can be quickly identified, allowing businesses to assess how well standardised performance management practices are being applied.

AI helps pinpoint where formal interactions lack focus, fail to drive value, or miss actionable outcomes. By recognising and addressing these gaps, organisations can align expectations and create a more unified, results-driven approach to performance improvement.

Eliminating Blind Spots: How AI Uncovers Hidden Risks and Unlocks Growth

AI doesn’t just surface the conversations happening within your business - it also reveals what’s missing. From gaps in knowledge and misaligned messaging to missed opportunities for growth, AI-driven insights help businesses refine training, enhance customer interactions, and maximise performance. By identifying these blind spots, organisations can proactively address challenges, improve customer satisfaction, and fully capitalise on growth opportunities.

Traditional observational practices like ‘go see,’ in-the-moment coaching, and call listening provide valuable insights, but they are time-consuming and often limited in scale. AI transforms this process by rapidly analysing hundreds of conversations, uncovering trends, and identifying the root causes of performance issues.

Analytics from our Large Language Model have already pinpointed billing confusion, root cause complaint drivers, and leadership inconsistencies that directly impact customer experience. These insights inform and strengthen our market-leading Leadership Excellence Programme, ensuring targeted and effective cultural transformation.

Without full visibility, hidden issues can escalate, leadership conversations can become misaligned with operational goals, and ineffective behaviours can go unchecked. Staying informed through AI is essential to maintaining strategic momentum, empowering leaders, and enabling long-term, sustainable success.

How can BFY help? 

Our award-winning Leadership Excellence Programme is a hands-on, immersive initiative designed to accelerate leadership development through on-the-job coaching. By design, the programme gathers large volumes of insights directly from leaders through observation of key coaching interactions, including:

• One-to-one coaching sessions
• Performance discussions
• Team performance dialogues
• Problem-solving sessions
• Informal team communication forums

By leveraging AI, data analytics, and psychometric assessments, we can quickly identify the specific development needs of each leader. This allows us to deliver targeted, bespoke coaching that fast-tracks leadership growth and strengthens operational performance.

By embracing AI, we're not replacing human insight but augmenting it, creating a more responsive, adaptive, and intelligent leadership development programme.

What can you achieve with Leadership Excellence?

Immersive coaching has delivered transformational benefits at scale for our clients.

In the video below, our team share their reflections on the impact of our Leadership Excellence programme, including the ‘secret sauce’ that has empowered operational leaders to unlock their true potential.

You can also see how the programme empowered over 350 operational leaders at E.ON Next here.

To gain deeper visibility into your organisation and unlock leadership potential, contact Kev Brown or visit our Leadership Excellence page here.