Stewart Kettle | 10 Jan 2024

Lee Castleton called the Post Office's helpline 91 times about issues he was having with the Horizon IT system. While managing a Post Office in Yorkshire, he faced accusations of owing £27,000 due to accounting discrepancies. His struggle, depicted in the ITV drama 'Mr Bates v The Post Office', led to a lost court battle, a staggering £300,000 debt, bankruptcy, and misery for his family.

Castleton's experience was not unique. Similar distress calls were being made by hundreds of sub-postmasters across the country, all pointing to one culprit: faulty software. What became of the information from all these calls? How did this critical feedback get lost or covered up within the Post Office organisation?

Now, envision a different scenario that could be enabled by AI technology today. Imagine if all sub-postmasters in the UK had the ability to directly message their experiences, feedback, and ideas to the head office. They could all collectively vent their frustrations about a new faulty system and their personal experiences of it. Imagine also that the CEO Paula Vennells could get a summary of all this frontline information whenever she wanted, and could dig into these personal stories without any filtering by middle-managers.

In the current crisis, the failures by the Post Office don't scream out the need for more technology or information. In fact, technology was at the heart of the problem, and Mr Bates says his dismissal was for bringing these issues to light. Yet, with today's AI technology, we can make information from frontline workers available company-wide. By harnessing data like this, can we prevent future corporate cover-ups? At the very least, making summarised data readily available to senior management would prevent later claims of ignorance.

Mr Bates ultimately only made headway with his case by collating the experiences of dozens, and then hundreds of sub-postmasters. Such crowdsourcing of information from frontline workers can now be seamlessly integrated into services - and not just to solve problems, but to harness ideas and innovations too.

Awful corporate helplines are a symbol of out-of-touch services. Yet, for sub-postmasters like Mr Castleton, the stakes were painfully higher. AI is seldom seen as a means to empower workers. However, if we use it to amplify the voices of those on the frontline of services, maybe information, ideas, and even a bit of empathy could flow right to the top.