What to Automate, What to Escalate, and What Happens to the Humans Left Behind
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AI is beginning to take a larger role in collections and financial services conversations.
But the most important question isn’t whether AI can make a call.
It’s which calls it should make/take and what happens to your agents when it does.
But if AI takes the easiest calls, the average human call gets harder.
The Human/AI Collections Matrix
There probably shouldn’t be one simple rule that says “AI calls go here” and “human calls go there.”
A better decision model looks at several characteristics at once:
| Conversation type | Owner | Complexity | Compliance risk | Empathy required | Judgment required |
| Balance inquiry | AI | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Due-date reminder | AI | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Standard account FAQ | AI | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Simple payment | AI / Hybrid | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Promise-to-pay arrangement | Hybrid | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 |
| Negotiated payment plan | Hybrid | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
| Consumer dispute | Human + AI assist | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 |
| Financial hardship | Human + AI assist | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| Complaint | Human | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Identity uncertainty | Human | 4 | 5 | 2 | 5 |
| Legal threat / attorney | Human | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 |
| Bankruptcy / deceased | Human | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Vulnerable consumer | Human | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
*These ratings are an Abstrakt operating framework rather than regulatory classifications. Companies should adapt the matrix to their business, clients, policies, and risk tolerance.
What Happens When AI Takes 44% of the Conversations?
This is where workforce planning gets interesting.
Consider an operation with 100,000 completed monthly conversations.
For simplicity, we’ll divide them into three groups:
| Call category | Monthly conversations | Share | Modeled AHT |
| Routine | 40,000 | 40% | 3 min |
| Moderate | 35,000 | 35% | 6 min |
| Complex | 25,000 | 25% | 10 min |
| Total | 100,000 | 100% | 5.8 min weighted AHT |
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