Pinky Redoble Wants AI to Make Service More Human
CPS Asia Pacific CEO Pinky Redoble sees AI as a practical aid to service teams, with human judgement and connection remaining essential.
Pinky Redoble argues that AI should strengthen human service rather than replace the people who deliver it. For Australian employers considering AI-enabled outsourcing, her position is to start with practical work improvements while keeping empathy, judgement and accountability with people.
From consultancy to delivery centre
CPS Asia Pacific began in 2019, when CPS Australia launched and a Singapore office was established to handle payments. The business later grew from consulting engagements into international delivery, with its Manila office and delivery centre becoming a central part of its operation. Today, the company has offices in Sydney, Singapore and Metro Manila, and describes its team as having more than 30 years of combined experience.
“Technology can assist the work; people remain responsible for what the service means.”
The company’s own presentation traces the development in stages. By 2020, it says, CPS had completed five major consulting engagements across the Asia-Pacific region. The business expanded internationally in 2021 and 2022, established its Manila office, and grew the team there in 2023. From 2024, it introduced AI features and began offering IT, back-office and customer support outsourcing.
CPS describes its name as short for Customer Persona Simplified and its approach as “Human-led. AI-enabled.” Its services span customer support, back-office operations, IT outsourcing, consulting, executive search and AI-enabled solutions. The company identifies electronics, hospitality, gaming and healthcare among the sectors it serves, and lists the UK, Australia, Canada, Asia and the US as client markets.
That combination of advisory work and service delivery is relevant to employers weighing an outsourcing model. A provider may be asked to improve a process, supply delivery capacity or help establish a service operation, and those aims need to be clear before technology is selected. CPS lists co-sourcing, build-operate-transfer and tailored engagements as ways of working with clients. For employers reviewing customer support or back-office requirements, the BPOAI.ai customer support directory and its back-office service directory offer relevant service categories to consider.
Where AI can support service work
In the statement she shared with BPOAI.ai on 27 October 2026, Redoble presents AI as a way to improve how a service operation works, rather than as a product that should be adopted for its own sake. She points to faster customer support, more informed decisions, improved quality monitoring and smarter workflows as possible uses. At the same time, she stresses that technology alone cannot create meaningful customer relationships. Empathy, cultural understanding, critical thinking and human judgement still matter in delivering good service.
Her seven focus areas cover both direct customer contact and the work around it. They include AI-assisted customer interactions and tools that support contact-centre agents, as well as practical generative AI uses in everyday service tasks. These applications can help employees find information or prepare work, but an employer still needs to define where the tool fits into the service process and what a person must check.
Redoble also identifies AI-supported training and coaching as an area for service teams. Used thoughtfully, these tools can help managers and employees focus on agent productivity, consistency and performance improvement. The value depends on how the information is used: coaching should help people develop their capability, not reduce a complex customer interaction to a score without context.
Other applications are aimed at repetitive or administrative work. Intelligent workflow automation can assist with post-interaction summaries, system updates and reporting, while AI-driven quality assurance can use interaction insights and performance data to highlight opportunities for improvement. These examples connect with familiar functions in customer support and back-office delivery, but they are not a reason to automate a task automatically. Employers first need to understand the task, its exceptions and the consequences of an error.
For Australian HR and project teams, that means starting with a defined operational problem. A team might want to reduce manual record updates, make guidance easier to access or help managers spot coaching needs. Setting out the current process, the intended improvement and the points where staff must intervene gives a pilot a clearer purpose. It also helps leaders assess whether a tool is making the work better for both customers and employees.
Why people stay accountable
Human and AI collaboration is another of Redoble’s focus areas. The principle is to bring AI tools into a BPO team while retaining human judgement, empathy and accountability. AI can contribute speed, consistency and analytical capacity; people bring experience, emotional intelligence and the ability to interpret a situation. The opportunity, in her view, lies in combining those strengths rather than treating them as alternatives.
That distinction matters in customer-facing work, where a conversation may involve an unexpected need or a sensitive decision. An automated suggestion can assist an employee, but the service model should make clear who reviews it, who can override it and who owns the outcome. The same discipline applies to back-office tasks: automation may help prepare a summary or update a system, while staff remain responsible for checking information that has material consequences.
Employers can make accountability practical by mapping decision points before implementation. Identify which tasks the system may handle, which outputs need human review and what employees should do when information is missing, unclear or outside the normal process. Set out how issues are escalated and how feedback from staff will be used to improve the workflow. This gives employees a working role in the change, rather than positioning them as the final checkpoint for a tool they did not help shape.
Keeping people accountable is also a workforce design question. Roles may change as routine steps are supported by technology, so managers should explain what responsibilities remain with employees and what new skills may be needed. GWS has outlined some of the communication, adaptability and technical capabilities employers may consider in its articles on skills and contributions in the Filipino workforce and qualities that support effective teams. These are useful considerations when planning roles around technology-enabled service, rather than assumptions about any individual worker.
“AI should make the human experience better, not make it disappear.”Pinky Redoble · Chief Executive Officer, CPS Asia Pacific
What success should look like
Redoble describes AI as a strategic enabler of people and performance. CPS says its aim is to help businesses adopt practical AI-enabled solutions that support employees, optimise operations and deliver measurable value. For employers, the important word is practical: a tool should be judged against an operational need, not simply its novelty or the number of tasks it can perform.
A useful evaluation considers the employee and customer experience alongside efficiency. Does the tool help staff resolve an enquiry or complete an operational task with less friction? Is the service accurate and consistent? Can employees identify when an automated recommendation is unsuitable? Are managers able to see whether quality is improving, without losing the context needed to interpret performance? These questions turn a broad technology ambition into a reviewable business case.
CPS sums up its offer as “Human expertise. AI-powered solutions. Flexible outsourcing built around your business.” Its stated engagement options—co-sourcing, build-operate-transfer and tailored arrangements—also point to the need to match the delivery approach to the client’s circumstances. Employers should clarify the work to be performed, the responsibilities retained in-house, the service measures that matter and how the arrangement will be reviewed as needs change.
The company frames the combination as human expertise providing empathy, judgement and relationship-building, alongside technology that can contribute speed, consistency, insights and automation. Together, those inputs are intended to support customer experience, smarter workflows and delivery that can scale. That is a more useful way to assess an AI-enabled service than treating reduced staffing as the default measure of success.
Planning the workforce around the process is just as important as selecting the tool. Employers can identify which capabilities are already present, where training may help and whether a new service partner or operating model is required. GWS’s overview of approaches to workforce capability and skills gaps provides related context for teams considering training, role design and workforce planning. The aim is to make the people, process and technology decisions fit together.
Pinky Redoble’s outlook for the next generation of BPO leaders
Redoble expects future BPO leaders to balance innovation with human connection. In her view, technology needs to be used responsibly and in ways that create lasting value for clients, employees and customers. That puts leadership responsibility beyond the decision to purchase a system: leaders also need to explain its purpose, define its limits and stay attentive to how it affects the people doing the work.
Her central message is captured in this statement: “AI should make the human experience better, not make it disappear.” The related CPS Asia Pacific presentation puts the same principle another way: “AI should empower people, not erase the human touch.” Together, the lines frame technology as support for service rather than a substitute for human connection.
For Australian employers, that perspective is especially useful when assessing an outsourcing proposal or an internal automation project. Ask the provider or project team to show how the tool fits into the employee workflow, what customer outcomes it is meant to support and where people retain discretion. Discuss how staff will be prepared for the change, how exceptions will be handled and how the operation will learn from errors or employee feedback. These questions keep the business case grounded in the actual service.
What this means for Australian employers
The practical lesson is to decide what work AI should make easier before deciding how to deploy it. Begin with a clearly defined process, involve the employees who understand its everyday demands and identify the customer or operational outcome that needs to improve. Then set human review and accountability into the design, rather than adding them after a problem emerges.
That approach can also help employers choose between improving an existing team, partnering for service delivery or developing a different operating model. The right arrangement depends on the work, the organisation’s responsibilities and the capabilities available; technology alone cannot answer those questions. A workforce brief should explain the tasks, service expectations, required skills, escalation needs and the intended role of AI, so that recruitment and delivery discussions start from the same requirements.
Before moving ahead, Australian HR and project teams can document one workflow they want to improve, the people affected by the change and the decisions that must remain human-led. If you are reviewing a customer service, back-office or wider workforce requirement, contact Global Workforce Solutions to discuss the need and submit a workforce brief that sets out the roles, capabilities and delivery model you are considering.