we.CONECT: The pop in your job – you work as Messaging and Collaboration Specialist at United Bank – which tasks would you highlight as particularly interesting? What is most exciting about your role, and why are you passionate about your job?
Willem Bagchus: I love any role that puts me in contact with people. I love people. Communications is vital to every organization and every department within it works with the messaging team.
This gives me the distinct pleasure of working with every department. Since we “pave the road they drive on”, I get to work with everyone to learn what’s important to them and help them realize their projects. This gives me a special overall view of the organization as a whole and how the teams fit together. I can suggest ideas and help everywhere.
I enjoy seeing people succeed. That is also why I enjoy conferences like this one. There is nothing to compare with the synergies of talented minds. That is where creativity begins. I find it extremely exciting to be part of that.
we.CONECT: You will moderate the interactive session “What is the correct and ethical use of AI in internal communication?” at Intranet Reloaded USA 2023. From your point of view and experience, what is the best approach?
Willem Bagchus: Ethics are rather simple: help people and try not to hurt people on purpose. Artificial intelligence is a very useful tool but a terrible master. Used correctly, it can be a fantastic time saver.
Where it falls hopelessly short is trying to replace human interaction. In my view, AI should never be used in customer-facing functions. Use real humans there. A company’s point of contact is the entire experience to a customer. No matter how well-intentioned the executive team might be, if you frustrate your customers by hiding behind an AI wall, you will soon sacrifice customer goodwill and with it, your customer base. Using AI here is a false economy. On the other hand, giving customers a choice or using AI to automate back end processes is a terrific use of the technology.
we.CONECT: What are the biggest difficulties in this regard? What do you see as particularly problematic?
Willem Bagchus: AI is still in its early stages. Consumer implementations of AI home automation, for example, are the fodder of jokes. Everybody has a “misunderstanding” story. It takes being on the development side of this that we can appreciate just how impressive the human mind is with regards to vocal comprehension and intuition. We’re still decades away from this being a dependable AI function. The key word here is dependable. As computing power continues to improve, we’ll see this get better every year.
The other key problem area is executives who are obsessed with “fiduciary responsibility”. That is, constantly prioritizing money over customer service. While the natural reflex is to claim that money is the only purpose of business, the counterpoint is that money is earned by being of service – whether the organization makes things or helps people in some way. Executives need to find an effective balance here. Being money obsessed will cause executives to put AI where it should not be used to save short term dollars.
we.CONECT: Looking to the future, what topics and upcoming trends in intranet and internal communications do you expect in the next 12 months – how will the industry develop?
Willem Bagchus: The current industry trends are towards cloud-based IT solutions. People are ditching in-house resources for shared cloud-based systems. This is a little short sighted, as it feels like an echo of the mainframe world of the 1970s. The centralization is good when our infrastructure is on and functional. However, when there is an outage, it becomes more painful. Cloud-based services do play a key role in remote work so it is here to stay. However, I believe the pendulum will soon swing back and with it, a better balance with on-perm resources. In addition, vast improvements in dependability and seamlessness are definitely on the way. Our reliance on these services demands it.
we.CONECT: What are your learning expectations from the event? Which topics are particularly important for you?
Willem Bagchus: As with any conference, the real value is in the interaction with the attendees. It is the exchange of ideas where synergies and ideas come from. I’m excited about the new ideas I will learn from my fellow attendees.
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