Howard Blick

Support Leaders must adapt and adopt AI now or risk becoming obsolete. The era of the 'giant' headcount-heavy support team is over; the future belongs to lean, tech-enabled units. To lead this shift, you must move beyond high-level strategy and get into the plumbing: review every process and set a 'radical automation' target. AI won't replace your team, but it will fundamentally change their job descriptions by automating the high-volume, transactional queries, allowing you to significantly drive down operational costs.

Success requires you to be the Support organisation’s loudest AI advocate. Your primary hurdle isn't the technology but needing to break the idea of "this is the way we’ve always done it". However, nuance is critical: you must embrace the messy middle. AI is never a 'set it and forget it' solution. Be prepared for things to break, expect a learning curve for you and your team, and treat deployment as the beginning of a continuous improvement cycle