The Most Expensive Job in Your Business Might Be Taking Notes

"Tower put a number on it. Most businesses haven't. That's the only difference."

Somewhere in your business today, someone is trying to listen to a customer and get it all down at the same time. Typing, or scribbling on a notepad, in the room or on a call.

A vet in a consult. A lawyer on a client call. A sales rep in a discovery. A project manager in a stand-up.

Half their attention is on the person. Half is on the notes. Neither task gets the version of them you are paying for, and the nuance, the thing that was really being said, is usually what slips.

Tower Insurance just put a number on that problem. An AI tool in their contact centre gave back the equivalent of six full-time staff working for a year. That's 13,000 hours, recovered in seven months. Average call handling time down 2.38 minutes across every interaction, which is a 15% lift in productivity. Their CEO Paul Johnston said it on the record.

What Tower fixed is a pattern that lives in every mid-size business in the country.

The pattern

The pattern is dual-tasking. Specifically, the moment one of your people is listening to another human AND trying to write things down at the same time.

Have a look at where it lives in a mid-size business:

• The vet in a consult, listening to the owner while writing the clinical note

• The accountant in a client review, tracking action items while answering questions

• The lawyer on a client call, drafting the file note in real time

• The sales rep in a discovery call, listening for buying signals while typing into the CRM

• The recruiter in an interview, scoring while listening

• The tradie at an estimate walk, listening to the brief and trying to remember it for the quote

• The GP, trying to stay present while completing the clinical record

• The project manager in a stand-up, facilitating while tracking the actions

  
  

That is the call-centre-of-one. It runs in every mid-size NZ business, hundreds of times a week. It just does not have a number on it the way Tower's does.

Until somebody puts one on it.

Why this is the first AI dollar

Tower's project was complex. The pattern they exposed is simple. And the tools that expose it are no longer enterprise scale. A good transcription tool starts at around twenty US dollars a month.

But the tool is not the unlock. A raw transcript on its own is just a wall of text. The unlock is a high-quality transcript in the hands of one or two people who know how to use AI properly. That combination is the magic. The tool captures the conversation, the operator turns it into something worth having. You do need your house in order. That means knowing what data you are handling and where it is going, especially when it is sensitive. Not a barrier, just part of doing it properly.

The reason this is your first AI dollar is not the cost. It is that you find out fast whether it works. Within two weeks you know whether your people have their attention back on the person in front of them. There is not much to argue about.

That makes it the safest place to start. And the place with the fastest learning loop.

A three-step way to do it this week

Tower needed Deloitte and AWS to find the pattern. You do not. You need three moves:

1. Find the pattern. Look at one role where someone is listening to a human and taking notes at the same time, every day. There will be more than one. Pick the highest-volume.

2. Point a transcriber at one meeting. Not all meetings, one. A weekly client review. A consult. A discovery call. Whatever happens most often. Pick a tool that fits the data you are handling, and put it in the hands of someone who will learn to use it well, for two weeks.

3. Compare the work. At the end of two weeks, ask one question: did the work get better, or did it get the same in less time? Either is a win. Both is the headline. Then expand.

That is the loop. Pattern, pilot, prove. Repeat with the next moment.

What this is really about

The argument your team has been listening to about AI is the wrong argument. Most of it is about big projects, big budgets, big risk. None of which a mid-size leader has the appetite for, fair enough.

But there is a smaller, sharper question your team can answer this week. Where is one of our people listening and taking notes at the same time, and what would it take to give them the headspace back?

Tower's number is real. The pattern they proved is real. The version of it that fits a 30-person accounting firm, a vet practice, a manufacturing business, or a law firm costs little more than a subscription and one or two people willing to learn the tools.

You do not need their budget. You just need to start counting.

Find your call centre of one

Every business has moments where people are listening and taking notes at the same time. In five minutes, find the workflows most likely to benefit from AI and identify where to start your first pilot.

Take the 5-Minute AI Readiness Snapshot

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About the Author 

Mark Lucas is Co-founder at Generation AI, where we help New Zealand business leaders build real AI capability.

Information provided is general in nature and does not constitute legal advice