In this episode of Game Changers, Change expert Scott Docherty and AI specialist Krish Kiri are joined by Mick Duthie, Director of Operations and Louise Peers, Head of Contact Centre Services at Crimestoppers.
Mick and Louise share their journey into integrating AI within Crimestoppers' operations, maintaining anonymity, and enhancing efficiency.
Tune in to learn about AI's applications in crime reporting, the conservative approach taken by Crimestoppers, and the future potential of AI in the justice sector. Gain insights on how new technologies can revolutionise operations and get practical advice on adopting AI while preserving core values.
Listen here or read on for an edited transcript.
Scott Docherty: Hello and welcome, everyone to the next episode of our Game Changers series. My name is Scott Docherty, and I am a Managing Consultant here at Clarasys. Today we are gonna be talking about unlocking the power of AI, so how starting small and scaling smart can unlock true benefits that we are all hearing about when it comes to AI and generative AI for that matter.
Before we get into the topic today, for those that are maybe more inexperienced when it comes to AI, to give a brief definition, we are essentially talking about technology that mimics human thinking and problem solving based on learned patterns from data inputs. Generative AI is a slightly newer element to that, which is when those systems are able to generate new content based on that data.
Today we are joined by some special guests from Crimestoppers. Crimestoppers will be a recognisable brand for many of us and has played a critical role in public safety and anonymous reporting of criminal activity for over 30 years. Delighted to say what we have their Director of Operations Mick Duthie with us and the Head of the Contact Centre Services, Louise Peers with us today. Hi, both.
Louise Peers: Hi.
Scott Docherty: On top of that, we then have Krish Kiri, one of our consultants who specialise in AI elements and who recently completed some work with Crimestoppers.
Krishanth Kiritharagopalan: Hey, everyone.
Scott Docherty: So today we're gonna dive into Crimestoppers journey with AI, how you have started to consider it in your organisation, and what lessons you might have to offer others who are on a similar journey.
So before we start, I might come to you, Mick. Can you just give us a quick overview of who Crimestoppers are, what you do, and why anonymity matters?
Mick Duthie: Okay, Scott, thank you. Krish, thanks very much for the invite to come down here today. We're really pleased to be here. Crimestoppers is an independent charity. It's been around for almost 40 years now, and we are there to empower people who haven't got the confidence to approach the police or other law enforcement agencies to come forward with crime information. Give it to us anonymously, and then we can send it safely on to law enforcement so they can do their work.
We're a charity of about 110 paid employees, and we've got probably another 350 volunteers across the UK. We work with every police force in the UK plus. Agencies like the Gang Master and Labor Abuse Authority, the National Crime Agency, Border Force, Immigration Enforcement, his Majesty's Revenue and Customs. So we've got quite a big footprint in the law enforcement world.
But the main thing for us is we provide an anonymous service. We say that it's a hundred percent guarantee of anonymity. And that's really important to us. And it's really important to the people that are contacting us, because they don't want any comeback. They might be nervous, or the offender that they want to report is a member of a family or a relative or a next door neighbour, and they're worried that if they pass the information on, there's gonna be repercussions. So in that nearly 40 years of service to the public, we've never let the public down. We've never broken that anonymity. So the way that we bring in the information, the way that we handle it, and then with the way we pass it on to law enforcement, we spend a lot of time, effort, money to make sure that a guarantee of anonymity is there. So that's why when we are looking at new technologies, including AI, we are really careful of what we do, and I think as a charity we've been really quite conservative in our approach to taking on new things. So that's why we are now really, really excited from a very, very small interaction that we had with your organisation. We're quite quickly moved into looking at how this can benefit us and benefit the public.
Scott Docherty: Thanks Mick, and a mightily impressive stat I guess, that you've been operating for that length of time and have managed to keep that, that promise to the public for the course of that time is very impressive. And Louise, I might just come to you, I guess in terms of the volume of tips and information and, and data I guess that you're looking at. What, what are we talking?
Louise Peers: Every day we are receiving over 2000 bits of information from members of the public that the team in the contact centre are triaging and disseminating out on a 24/7 basis, and it continues to grow. So in the last 10 years. Volumes have gone up over a hundred percent and we're still increasing year on year. So there's an ever-increasing demand for the service. And we're kind of looking into reasons why there's a lot of stuff around, you know, 101 isn't perhaps the best service. So we do know that some callers come through to us through frustration, having to wait. There has been an increase in a lack of confidence in policing perhaps, a bit of resistance to actually speak to officers and report that way. And also I have to say our own kind of marketing as well has, has greatly improved, especially locally with specific campaigns highlighting police forces own kind of priority areas is driving information into us.
Scott Docherty: Absolutely. And I think that's where many members of the public will recognise the Crimestoppers brand for particular campaigns that have been run. Whether it be, as you say, sort of local priorities or some of the more national campaigns when there's particular instances or events that you highlight and ask for information on.
And I think interesting you talk about the growth year on year, I guess be keen to understand a little bit around what are the challenges that are presented for you in terms of managing that level of information coming into your contact centre and then therefore being passed on to your partners?
Louise Peers: I think the main obvious one is resourcing, you know, how are we going to grow as a charity and especially in the contact centre to manage these contacts. And that's where, you know, AI is certainly going to help us. And also, you know, we have to balance other services that we offer. So yes, 80% of what we are dealing with comes in online, but that 20% that's coming in on telephone is still equally important and probably a bit more demanding. It takes longer to speak to somebody, it can be more complex, so we definitely need the resource balance to manage all of that.
Scott Docherty: There are therefore some kind of fairly clear use cases in that space. Before we kind of dive into some of those in a bit more detail, it'd be good to understand just your understanding around AI, your level of capability around AI. It's obviously a very new topic for a lot of us. A lot of us are trying to kind of get to grips with when and where to use it, how to use it. So I think, as you obviously are starting on this journey, it'd be interesting to see how that journey started for you.
Louise Peers: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, it's been kicking around for a while and I personally, as kind of in that contact centre space, felt under a lot of pressure to introduce it because everyone else is, you know, AI has been a hot topic for a number of years and you know, when I go out with other industry professionals in the contact centre world, it's, everyone's got some fancy bit of AI and it's been really difficult to understand where we can safely and securely introduce it to our contact centre to have the maximum benefit.
So for a while, I think before Clarasys came in and helped us, we were a little bit overwhelmed with the opportunities and potentially even our own ideas to be honest. We had so many ideas coming from so many different places that it just felt all too difficult and it just kept getting passed over. And when we had the opportunity to work with you guys, it really helped us kind of focus in on a small area of translation to start with. And from that, you know, other conversations were happening. So we feel much more confidence in the arena and yeah, more comfortable actually, we feel like we know what we are going to do and that it will work for us.
Mick Duthie: Yeah, from my point of view, the growth and demand looks like it's gonna continue going forward, and we either put more people in our contact centre, which is really, really expensive. Or we look at another solution, and Louise has talked about for years that we've sort of played around about how IT can help us and how we can do some things differently.
I was fortunate enough to go along to a Clarasys AI taster event, and that really sort of opened my eyes to it. And having worked with you guys previously, it was almost like we felt comfortable that you were gonna hold our hand through the journey, so it wasn't so scary I think so that's really, really helped. I think if I'd gone to someone else's event, I would've listened to it. It would been in one ear and out the other, and we would've just carried on. But going there, listening to yourself and some others. And I think somebody said, treat AI as a clever intern, a new member of staff that you give a task to and then go away and then you're gonna bring it back and have a look at it yourself. That was a really sort of insightful comment to me, so I went back and sold that to our executive team.
Louise Peers: We are all using that now. We are, we are all talking about this clever intern. Yeah. We haven't found one yet. Yeah. Yeah. We're still looking.
Scott Docherty: Well I also must say that is a quote that was from someone else, so it was actually from the Prosci, I think it's Chief Information Officer who came up with that.
And it is, I think, a very accurate quote of treating it as an intern who can do some grunt work for you and do some of the sort of manual hard yards, but actually the level of insight analysis, sort of deep thinking still needs to be there on top of that work. It's not just going to go away and completely replace all human interaction in processes.
Mick Duthie: Because we've got this guarantee of anonymity and we're really, really very nervous about doing anything different, but we feel really quite confident now, you know, from that AI workshop to the interaction we've had with your team to the research that we've done ourselves. I think we're really very excited about what it can do for us, and it's not to chop the number of people that we've got. Absolutely not at all. What we'll be able to do, hopefully from any efficiencies that we get, is that our staff will have more time to give a better quality service. So it's not about chopping numbers or reducing costs. It's actually been more efficient in a different way.
Krishanth Kiritharagopalan: It's actually really interesting the way you guys have kind of phrased it from being conservative to the numbers to kind of that scariness. I think one of the things we got the impression from Crimestoppers early on is that all of those words come from the element of care and trust about your organisation, the data that comes in and the people that are reporting to make sure they have that care or across it. I think what you'll see is a lot of organisations sometimes jump before they do their due diligence, and you can see that mission statement that you guys work towards, it has to funnel through every single part of your process. And then when we were working with the AI elements, it has to funnel through that as well. AI can be a scary thing, right? Like you said, Louise, everyone is doing it. There are so many different ways you can pull it in, but we have to pull it in in a way that's right for your organisation. And again, that comes from really understanding what you guys do today, and a little bit of scariness or nervousness is normally a good thing. 'Cause then when you do get that confidence where you are now, you know the route that you're going down.
Mick Duthie: Part of the thing that we do is that there's a human involved in every report that comes in. So I think last year was about 720,000 reports that came into us, into Louise's team. Somebody is looking at each one of those reports. Somebody's picking up the phone and listening to the phone call on every occasion. So, again, that's another nervousness. We don't wanna chop the human out, but if we can actually make the human more efficient by using AI, I think that'd be great for us.
Scott Docherty: Yeah, absolutely. And I think those hesitancies around it, as Krish sort of alluded to there, are prudent. Particularly in the context of what you do as an organisation, that promise that you've kept for such a long period of time, that trust that you've built amongst the public. I think that is absolutely an understandable approach to take, rather than the gungho, let's just go and get a tool and throw it in and see what happens.
I think that ability to implement AI in a safe and effective way is one thing that sometimes is not necessarily balanced in decision making. So Krish, you also talked to the point there around, where is the actual difference gonna be made with the introduction of that kind of technology. And Louise, I know you mentioned there as well, around there's 1,000,001 ways you could have looked at it. So I guess from your perspective, how do you differentiate those ways that will have that more game-changing difference to your organisation versus the ones that might just be a shiny application of some technology? Has there been a sort of approach you've taken there or some thinking done there?
Louise Peers: I think what's really helped is having the independence of Clarasys to come in and help us understand different routes we might want to take, because, you know, we've got some great suppliers and partnerships and we've got great contacts in industry. But actually normally they always want to sell something. And throughout my career at Crimestoppers, you know, anonymity, especially with technology has been really difficult for technology companies, suppliers to actually understand. They always want to sell you that kind of sales piece of yes, we can bring back the whole conversation and give you all the history, but to understand how precise and exact we are about anonymity and the deletion of, and secure storage, has been quite difficult, so having Clarasys help us make those independent decisions has been really, really useful.
Scott Docherty: Excellent. And actually now that we're kind of onto that topic, we recently did some work together, which was very interesting and productive, I think from both sides of the house. Maybe offer up some time Krish to introduce what actually did we get up to with Crimestoppers and what were we looking at?
Krishanth Kiritharagopalan: Sure. What we started working with Crimestoppers on was a little bit around that kind of translation services. So in terms of scope, in terms of what we wanna move towards or what we wanna focus on. A big part of it was trying to understand how AI can support their processes, for both that kind of forms element of it incoming and also the phone calls as well. Like you mentioned, Louise, both sides of it are important. We need to make sure that both sides are corrected and understood properly by AI when we're trying to add all these pieces in.
From an outcome perspective, I think what we were eager to get to, there's always buzzwords, right? There's always speed, efficiency, cost saving, all of those elements, right? But there's an element of turning around and saying, what does this look like in reality? And one of the things we took from Crimestoppers, which was quite interesting around it, was about that kind of data security. And I think this is where our process came in, like before we jump into 'Okay, what can AI do and what's all the exciting things it can push towards?', there's a little bit of understanding the problem. And understanding the problem comes from like, okay, this is how we wanna work with our translation services. We need to really understand how secure the data is, how much control we can have on it. The data retention, having the servers within the UK, all of those elements feed into it. So a big part of our work was from understanding the problem as well as we can, informs the research that we can do in terms of finding the different providers or who can serve the use cases that we care about. Then as you can imagine, you can put this kind of prompt into any system. It is actually part of the AI use case, right? You can go into any AI system and say, we are looking for this. It'll spit out 150 different options. But really using that extra element of the human element, which Crimestoppers are talking about is like jumping in and saying, what's the actual thing that will be valuable for us?
And we came up with, I think, two decent recommendations that hopefully sets us up moving forward. And again, that leads onto so many different opportunities within AI, right? So you can split it into two that I see. One is a macro level view, which is like, how do we use AI across your whole organisation? We talked about integrations of systems, process flows. How do we make sure the the data stays in one place? Then there's also that micro element, right? So when we talk about humans and the people that work for us, how do we support them in the work they do? It's not about taking away humans from day-to-day jobs. It's about how can we give you the tools to leverage yourself in the best way?
One thing I always really enjoy talking about, it's the nerd of me that comes out a little bit I always say, but there was a point at which people worked without the internet. Once the internet came, there was always that worry, but like, oh, is this gonna replace me? It wasn't. It was just another tool to help you gain information a lot quicker. We live in a world where information is quite critical to us and we're opening up more and more. AI is kind of that, right? It's the next step, it's the next evolution in it for us. And humans are always gonna be a part of it. It's about demystifying it, essentially, and that's the game that we're changing. It's essentially turning around to people and say, here's something new that's special that can work for your organisation at a background micro level, and finding the right way to implement that as well.
Louise Peers: And I think that's what you've done by identifying the area for translations, which has been really useful because that's a really small percentage of our contacts are coming in in different languages, but it's a timely process. We are talking, you know, at least a 24 hour turnaround and it's expensive. And you'll know from the work that we did together that it's priced per word and the information that's coming in, we don't even know if we can use that, if we can process it as an actual report. So to have that done quicker and cheaper and more effectively, is a real win for us and we are looking forward to implementing those recommendations quite soon.
Scott Docherty: So we've talked a bit about considering AI almost as decision makers. So where might we look at AI across our organisation to support process, to support efficiency, to support whatever it might be. And we've talked a little bit around as an organisation, Crimestoppers, there are some elements that might have been holding you back in making decisions on that. So making sure that we're doing it in the right way, making sure that there's data security and the sort of prudent considerations around that.
What about from sort of an end user, so a frontline staff member? What do you think might be holding them back from adopting AI or considering AI as something that they should be sort of jumping on board with, so to speak?
Mick Duthie: I think it's that anonymity promise. So you know, that's a golden thread that runs through everything we do at the charities. I think people are just risk-averse and very conservative in their approach. So we had somebody trial co-pilot on one meeting without telling anybody else. And the alarm bells almost went off and I was in the meeting going, what is this? What is going on? And it was like, we've gotta stop this. We've gotta stop this. We can't start, carry on speaking. Anyway, the, the meeting finished and then that individual apologised about what they'd done. They didn't really know what they were doing themselves, but they started co-pilot. The actual minutes of the meeting were brilliant, you know, and it was like, right, there's a risk there potentially if we don't know what we're doing, but actually look at the outcomes and the benefits.
So I think we need to change the culture around AI. You know, lead from the front, but explain to people that it's not so dangerous if you are not breaking our material out into a wider environment. And now you know, the data, the personal data, the crime data that we get from the public is never gonna go out into that arena. But we've got a network of 15 regional managers that work remotely across the country with police forces, and they've been told that they can't use AI to help create campaign assets or media releases or whatever. And actually I think that we've been disingenuous to our staff because actually this is gonna save them time, effort, and money, as long as the safeguards in place as well. So I think we just need to change our optics around it, about what is important and why it's not as scary as we first thought it was.
Louise Peers: I think if I can just add as well in terms of our users, the general public that are, are using our service. We've also had traditionally some nervousness around, we were looking at chatbots or AI to help increase the quality of the information that we are gathering. So there are some fields on the form that people tend to skip over or don't give enough information. And, you know, Crimestoppers as an organisation, has the perception of the public will perceive it to damage our reputation, perhaps compromise, anonymity. So there's some work to do there as well to understand that, you know, things have moved on quite a lot and our people still concerned by that level of.
Mick Duthie: Most websites you go on now, there's gonna be something there that's gonna prompt you.
Most other websites will be tracking your cookies. We'll be looking at who you are, maybe using that data to sell you something in the future. We're absolutely paranoid that that can't happen, so anybody who's coming onto our website, there's minimal cookies on there, as soon as they hit the reporting form, there's nothing there. So there's no tracking on it. So we just need to not educate the public, but just remind the public that if you go on there and something's prompting you, we not tracking what you're doing, we are just trying to help you.
Krishanth Kiritharagopalan: It's interesting you mention it, cause I think it's exactly that part, right? It happens on so many websites today. I think the difference here is, is the marketing industry that you guys work with, the use cases, and it's across everything. Like we've seen so many different trends. I think another charity Justice, they've recently released the AI framework, which kind of gives you a bit of guidance about how to use AI. But again, kind of what you mentioned around that safeguarding process as well. There's so many different things around this and it comes back to that kind of mission statement that you're getting back to. We can't lose that element of it, but we shouldn't turn around and reject opportunities. It's about figuring out how we can use those opportunities in the right way.
Mick Duthie: Yeah. We need to move with the times, but we don't ever forget about what's really, really important to us and the public.
Krishanth Kiritharagopalan: Exactly.
Scott Docherty: And there's an interesting point, I think you alluded to there, Mick, around people using the tools, using AI tools in their day-to-day, using AI tools potentially in their work when it's not necessarily a sanctioned thing to do, so to speak. There's an interesting stat though, actually, which is something around 80 odd percent of managers say that they use AI in their day-to-day work, but in the region of 20% of them have had any form of formal training or engagement on it. So I guess that there in and of itself indicates that people are using it, they will be using it in their personal life, as well as that will then bleed across into their professional lives. So. How do we get on the bandwagon, so to speak, and kinda support that in a way that gives them the right structures such that they're using it in the right ways and for the right reasons. And then from an organisational perspective, protects you from any potential uses that aren't what you're intending.
So I don't know if that's been anything that you've had as a challenge or anything that's come up. I'd be interesting to hear.
Mick Duthie: Yeah, so it is not that long ago, maybe a couple of months before I came along to your session, that there was a couple of people within the organisation trying to create a strategy or guidance around AI and the use of it within the charity. There was two completely different opposite views that tried to go into one document. And when I read it, I said, this doesn't make sense. We're either gonna use AI and allow people, you know, give them some guidelines or we are never gonna use it, we're not gonna use it. And this document was trying to sort of say we're not gonna use it, but if you do, then you have to do... That just highlights how confused we all were around what is out there and we then as a result of that, we were stopping our regional managers who probably were that 80% who were using AI to generate content or whatever to make their lives more efficient. And we were saying, no, you can't use it anymore.
There has gotta be safeguards in place. But going back to the thing that I first mentioned and you've talked about as well, is that clever intern. You know, as long as it's a human that's reviewing what's being produced, that's fine. If it's a media release, that's gonna go out, it's really important that there's a human element to it. And the big risk for us is that the crime data, but that's never gonna go through this if we're gonna use AI, for that, for whatever reason, then it's gonna be locked away in a secure environment, an AI environment within the charity, rather than going out into the Chat GPT world or sharing it with others. So I just think that the light's been switched on with us. We are really keen and eager to do it. We probably need to come back to you guys to hold our hands a bit more and say, you know, what do we do next? But we've gone from zero to not 100 miles an hour yet, but we're getting into second or third gear now.
Krishanth Kiritharagopalan: It does take time. But it's to what you've mentioned, and Louise, you've also touched on it that change element, of we all know change is scary. No human wants it. If someone tries to change something in my life, I'm a bit like, no, no, please don't do it. But it's interesting 'cause AI has been such a prominent thing. There's the element of fear turning into the element of opportunity.
There was a recent Gov UK study that came out and it's actually had some really interesting stats I think it was 96% of UK adults are aware of what AI is now, and 71% of them has the ability to explain it partially, as well. And of course there's an age scale, like the younger people who are playing a lot with AI kind of thing, much younger than me as well, know a lot about it kind of thing. But it's really good to see that so many people, even our workforces, will probably have some understanding around it. They're probably using it in their day-to-day lives, and they're probably getting to the point where they will question certain things at work to turn around, like, I could probably use this to help me here, kind of thing. And the quicker we get on top of that. We can support that in a structured way. Right? Which is what we're getting to.
Scott Docherty: Yeah, and I think that's actually a really interesting point around understanding use cases of it. And I think we've kind of just alluded to that in different ways there. So there are different use cases where we need to be more structured and careful. And when that's dealing with sensitive data and things like that, we obviously have to put more guardrails around that. Whereas if the use cases are around writing an email or something a bit more individual that actually doesn't have any sensitivity to it. To what extent do we need to put guardrails around that and controls around that.
But what is actually also interesting there is to what extent we can understand new use cases from colleagues. So there might be uses of AI that we as individuals who are maybe involved in decision making around, you know, where AI's gonna be applied across the organisation can't foresee. And we can't see how that might be used on the ground because we're not in that job every day.
So actually how do we get those use cases to kind of be unearthed from those individuals, 'cause that actually might be where we end up finding some real benefit that we weren't able to kind of put into a business case and foresee because it wasn't something that we came across when we'd been doing some scoping work around it. And I, I don't know if that, that's anything you've experienced in terms of seeing some niche or interesting use cases in Crimestoppers.
Louise Peers: I think for me in the contact centre, it's about involving everybody. So looking at those kind of first line practitioners of systems and getting them involved before we start any project. Especially at the moment, we're going to be kicking off looking at some automation in the process of what we receive from members of the public and how we push that out securely to law enforcement, and it's the guys that do that day in, day out that are gonna have potentially the, the magic to help us get that right. And it's their work as well, so it's right to involve them and bring them along with that kind of change in the culture shift as well.
Mick Duthie: Whilst all of this is happening with regards to AI, we've just employed our first ever data analyst and we're creating a data strategy as well. Whilst it's a secure environment, we've got a huge amount of data that we don't use. So there is a potential there that AI can help us identify trends, identify changes in reporting, differences in police force areas, or some of our commercial clients as well. So there's a potential there with the new data analyst and that team to really take things forward in that arena as well.
Scott Docherty: So actually we're coming on to almost more looking ahead. So from a Crimestoppers perspective, we've started dipping our toe in into the world and the realm of, of ai. Where do you see that moving forward for you?
Mick Duthie: Certainly a lot of focus is in the contact centre, so the translation and then the formatting of our reports from what the public send in to what it goes in front of an agent before they disseminate. We think around 15 minutes we can probably save on each report. And when you're talking about 220,000 reports, that's a huge saving.
There's that, then there's, we've moved into a new IT strategy as well. So we're looking at introducing copilot. So that's focused on mines, on our file systems and where we've got stuff stored. And it's a bit of a nightmare at the minute to be honest, but even if we can get all of that moved in, so copilot can start to look at that. I mean, every day I'm seeing emails that are flying around the organisation saying, has anybody got something around this crime type, can anybody remember about this, that, and the other, you know? And if we've got copilot that just automatically looks across all our files, which hopefully we can do that relatively quickly, that's gonna save so much time, duplication, waste of money in creating the same assets in a different part of the country. So yeah, there's more opportunities for us going forward.
Scott Docherty: Absolutely. And then how about in the wider justice sector? So obviously you interact with policing, you interact with other partners that you provide information to. Do you see any sort of future for ai or what kind of future do you see for AI amongst any of the wider justice partners?
Mick Duthie: Policing is, uh, you know, budgets are tight and demands ever growing. 20 years ago, police weren't having to deal with some of the stuff that they're doing now. So that online stuff that. Cyber, that international crime, that AI is gonna help massively around that. Redaction of material for proceedings, that's gonna be a huge saving for policing as well.
And for us interacting with law enforcement is, can we get our material into law enforcement in a more efficient and effective way? Can we get outcomes from them? Because it's really important that whilst the public give us the material and we send it on to the cops, it's good for us to know what the results are. So AI is a potential, gonna be able to close that feedback loop as well. So lots of opportunities for policing and lots of opportunities for us to help policing cut crime, keep people safe, lock up the bad guys.
Louise Peers: I think also the introduction of AI to the 1 0 1 system is helping a lot as well, so helping to triage their calls more effectively. And we've kind of been in touch with a few forces to see what we might learn from that as well, which is useful.
Krishanth Kiritharagopalan: It's really good. I think one of the things we are taking away and, we spoke about before, is it's end-to-end. Although right now the implementation might be at a micro level, like we said before, you are both looking from a macro level, like how can they touch so many other elements of the process? How can we feed it backwards? How can we get to an integrated system across different areas, give efficiency, but effectively give you that information you can act on. And it will only help make the organisation better, grow and again, serve the people in the right way, which is what we want to go to.
Mick Duthie: As you said, end to end from somebody hitting our website or a phone number into our contact centre with our agents into the report that goes off to the police, the way that we create our assets for campaigning, the way that we get the feedback and the how we can measure success. So AI is gonna help us all up through that journey.
Scott Docherty: Lots of very interesting nuggets of information I'm sure everyone will be taking forward. As a sort of final piece of advice, I want to ask, for those that are just starting on their journey with AI or are in the midst of the beginnings of it, do you have any sort of golden nuggets that you would give based on the experiences that you have gone through recently?
Louise Peers: For me personally, it's about finding that niche area, that focus that you can map something out and confidently take forward. And from that you'll get proof of concept, confidence and you know, conversations that happen because of that process that you can look to expand it. But for me it's been about finding that one thing that we can do and get up and running essentially.
Scott Docherty: Yeah, almost that point around starting small, scaling it, and then that's where you see the real benefit.
Mick Duthie: And for me is have an open mind. Even if you are nervous or fearful, it looks like it's gonna be a great future for us or for others. And the golden nugget for me is when you get an invite to go to a seminar that you're not sure of, is, it might be late on a Thursday evening or whatever, but it's worth going. And you know, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about this now if I hadn't gone along to that event. So thank you Clarasys for putting that event on.
Scott Docherty: Well, we're glad you came as well. And Krish, any final thoughts?
Krishanth Kiritharagopalan: I think Mick and Louise you've hit it perfectly as well. Start small, grow into it. The last fun fact I'll give you guys is one of the things we've seen is that the AI market, as we said, is growing. UK's market is worth around 21 billion pounds. It's growing to 1 trillion by 2035. You can take it two ways. One, you can get scared and be like, oh my god, the numbers a thing. But what it means is there's always gonna be innovation, right? And that innovation is there to support us. So take a nugget away to say, no matter how big your firm is, no matter how small it could be, no matter what you're doing today, no matter where you think, I'm not too sure where to go into it, there's always elements and information there to support you. And I think starting small, figuring out what you can change is such a good way for us to see real benefits. And it gives you that case, right? Even you see something come to life, you know, you can push forward with it as well.
Scott Docherty: Excellent. Thank you very much for the wise words and thank you very much as well to Mick and Louise and to Krish for joining us today.
As ever, we are always keen to hear thoughts from listeners, so please do feel free to reach out to us via LinkedIn or via the Clarasys website. And thank you all for listening. I hope you have enjoyed the conversation.
Guest bio’s
Mick Duthie, Director of Operations, Crimestoppers
On leaving the Met, Mick worked for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales on an initiative bringing together global law enforcement agencies to work with the Church to fight modern slavery. Mick joined Crimestoppers in August 2019, his remit includes the Contact Centre, Fearless (Youth Project), Marketing Communications, and leading the Regional Managers’ team.
Find Mick on LinkedIn here.
Louise Peers, Head of Contact Centre Services, Crimestoppers
As a member of the Executive Management Team at Crimestoppers, Louise is a key influencer and decision-maker most prominently in operational IT development projects and risk management issues.
Find Louise on LinkedIn here.
Krishanth Kiritharagopalan, Managing Consultant, Clarasys
Find Krish on LinkedIn here.
To discuss anything discussed in the podcast, please contact us at podcast@clarasys.com.