Author Description

The AI Service Playbook is a practical field guide for leaders navigating the real-world adoption of AI in modern customer service operations. Moving beyond hype and experimentation, this book explains how AI—particularly agentic and AI voice agents—can be safely embedded into existing service environments to improve outcomes, control risk, and transform unit economics. Written for executives, operators, and transformation leaders, the book focuses on how work actually flows through contact centres and service organisations today. It shows how to redesign customer journeys, define clear boundaries between human and AI decision-making, and implement guardrails that satisfy operational, legal, and regulatory scrutiny. Rather than treating AI as a standalone technology project, the authors position it as an infrastructure shift—one that must be governed, measured, and optimised like any other core operational capability. Through cross-sector patterns, plain-English frameworks, and board-ready business cases, readers learn how to identify high-value use cases, avoid common deployment failures, and scale AI responsibly. The book culminates in a pragmatic 90-day plan that helps organisations move from intent to live results without losing trust or control. This is not a theoretical AI manifesto. It is a hands-on playbook for leaders who must deliver better service, lower costs, and safer outcomes—at scale. Keith Hamilton is a UK commercial leader and AI strategist in the contact-centre industry. As Chief Commercial & AI Strategy Officer at Absolute Intelligence UK, he designs and scales blended human–AI operations for regulated and non-regulated sectors, with a focus on measurable outcomes. Over a three-decade career spanning retail, e-commerce, technology services and healthcare, Keith has led revenue growth, customer operations and digital transformation in roles from supermarket manager to managing director and chief growth