This time we are celebrating with Dr Gautam Jha who along with a team* has had a paper published in the Journal of Service Management.
At some point, most of us or someone close to us will experience vulnerability.
The paper reflects a growing interest in AI-agents - systems that can act, negotiate, and make decisions on behalf of humans - and what their emergence means for customer experience when people face imbalance in power, information, or ability in comparison to service providers, especially in vulnerable contexts.
Rather than focusing on AI purely as a tool for automation or personalisation, the paper considers how personal AI-agents can shape experiences by addressing questions of agency and control in service settings.
It identifies the critical design attributes that personal AI-agents need to exhibit that can re-balance service provider interests with consumer advocacy.
They recommend four archetypes for the design of personal AI-agents (1) serviceorchestrator, (2) protectivesentinel, (3) reliableintermediary and (4) autonomousally for the designers and developers of personal AI-agents depending on the needs of consumers experiencing vulnerability.
This work forms part of ongoing research at the Cambridge Service Alliance, University of Cambridge on AI-agent adoption in service, and the implications of agentic systems for organisations and customer experience.
The fabulous team of interdisciplinary co-authors consist of: Jesse Wright, Aishwarya Singhal, Zhang Yaofu, Jamie Burton and Janet McColl-Kennedy
We are grateful to the editors, associate editor and reviewers of Journal of Service Management for their thoughtful insights and engagement with the paper.