AI is accessible to everyone. Human connection makes the difference.

Based on an interview with John Thorneycroft, Chief Strategy Officer at Enreach, originally published in Dutch by Het Financieele Dagblad. 

As AI becomes widely available, competitive advantage no longer comes from access to the technology itself. What matters is how businesses combine AI with their processes, data and human expertise. One of the biggest opportunities lies in making better use of spoken communication — a valuable source of customer knowledge that has traditionally been difficult to capture and manage. 

For years, much of the information exchanged during customer calls remained in the heads of individual employees. Important details, agreements and insights were often recorded inconsistently, if at all. Advances in speech recognition, transcription and automated summarisation are changing that. 

“Much of what was discussed with customers used to remain in the memory of a salesperson or employee,” explains John Thorneycroft, Chief Strategy Officer at Enreach. “Today, conversations can be recorded, summarised and added to the systems used to manage customer relationships. This makes communication more transparent and less dependent on individuals, while giving businesses a better understanding of their customers.” 

Turning conversations into shared knowledge 

Capturing spoken communication can have significant organisational benefits. When conversations become part of a company's collective knowledge, valuable customer information remains accessible even when employees change roles or leave the business. New colleagues can get up to speed faster, handovers become easier and commercial opportunities can be identified earlier. It can also reduce the risk of losing customer relationships when a key contact person leaves. 

According to Thorneycroft, however, the real competitive advantage does not lie in the technology itself, but in what businesses achieve with it. 

As similar AI capabilities become more widely available, the crucial question is which problems organisations want to solve. AI needs a clearly defined purpose, sufficient context and appropriate boundaries. Without these, its outputs can be unpredictable or of limited value. This thinking is central to Enreach's Smart Contact vision, which brings together voice, digital communications and AI to make business interactions more effective. By automating routine tasks, businesses can give employees more time for conversations where personal attention genuinely adds value. Simple enquiries about delivery times or straightforward changes to appointments, for example, do not always require human involvement. 

“Human contact remains essential for building relationships and solving complex problems together,” says Thorneycroft. “Simpler interactions can increasingly be supported or handled by AI. This prevents employees from spending too much time searching for information, recording details and answering recurring questions. The time saved can then be spent on conversations where personal contact really makes a difference.” 

AI should support people, not replace them 

The boundary between human and automated interaction is not always clear-cut. Rescheduling an appointment may be a straightforward task that can easily be automated. Yet a similar request in a different context may require sensitivity and human judgement. In healthcare, for instance, processing a repeat prescription may be relatively routine, while a conversation with a vulnerable patient calls for personal attention. Thorneycroft therefore does not expect AI to replace entire sales or customer service roles in the near future. In business communications, he sees AI primarily as a tool that supports employees. AI can turn spoken information into structured data, summarise conversations and automatically transfer relevant details to CRM systems. This does more than reduce administrative work. It also allows businesses to preserve knowledge that might otherwise remain scattered across conversations, personal notes or individual employees' memories. 

“Businesses need to gain experience with what these systems can and cannot do,” Thorneycroft explains. “At the same time, they need a clear understanding of their own processes. Which interactions should remain human, and which can be automated?” 

Better processes and human judgement become more important 

As AI takes on more operational tasks, process design and quality control become increasingly important. Technology can perform actions, but it cannot take responsibility for the outcome. Businesses therefore need employees who recognise when an automated response should be corrected or when a customer needs personal assistance. 

The ability to evaluate AI-generated results is particularly important. Employees must be able to judge whether an output is accurate, appropriate and aligned with the intended objective. In this environment, professional experience may become even more valuable. People who understand the context of a customer interaction can use AI more effectively and assess its results more reliably. For businesses, this means that successful AI adoption requires more than choosing the right tools. It also involves defining processes, establishing clear responsibilities and ensuring that employees have the skills to work effectively with AI. 

Making AI accessible to smaller businesses 

Large enterprises are more likely to have dedicated AI teams, but the same underlying technologies are increasingly becoming accessible to small and medium-sized businesses. Enreach's Smart Contact approach is specifically designed with this market in mind. 

Rather than introducing AI without a clear objective, businesses should first identify where communication processes create friction. Understanding where customers experience delays, where information gets lost or where employees spend time on repetitive tasks makes it easier to determine where automation can add real value. At the same time, the ability to capture more information from conversations makes responsible data management increasingly important. AI can extract valuable insights from customer interactions and help create more detailed customer profiles. But this information can also be sensitive. Organisations therefore need to consider where data is stored, who can access it and how it is protected. 

“The more information AI can extract from communication, the more important it becomes to know where that information ends up,” says Thorneycroft. “Organisations need to structure, secure and manage their data carefully. This makes data sovereignty increasingly relevant.” 

The real differentiator is how businesses use AI 

The growing adoption of AI is more than a technological development. It requires businesses to rethink how they organise communication, manage customer knowledge and balance automation with human interaction. The key questions are not simply which AI capabilities are available, but which interactions should be automated, where personal attention remains essential and how valuable customer information can be protected and used responsibly. As AI technology becomes accessible to more organisations, these decisions will increasingly determine whether it delivers better customer relationships and business results. 

Ultimately, competitive advantage will come not from having AI, but from knowing how to use it — and when human connection matters most. 

The original Dutch publication can be found in Het Financieele Dagblad (October 30).