Capita accelerates BPO transformation with agentic AI
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM — Capita, the UK’s largest business process outsourcing (BPO) firm, is pioneering the use of Agentforce to transform public and private sector operations.
By deploying Salesforce’s technology, the company is reshaping how it serves government and enterprise clients—with over 220 AI use cases already identified.
AI-powered recruitment slashes hiring timelines
The manual recruitment method that Capita used to employ earlier demanded that 50 candidates be screened to select a single candidate successfully, whereas the new AI-driven recruitment, based on Agentforce, can handle 10,000 candidates per year.
The system allows the applicants to interact naturally with the system, skills and job real-time matching, and slashes time-to-hire.
The impact extends beyond speed. Automation of screening and initial assessments allows the human recruiters of Capita to engage each candidate in more complex decision-making as well as candidate experience.
The change indicates a larger trend in BPO, in which repetitive work is done by AI, and exceptions and ethical guidance are left to employees, as Adolfo Hernandez, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), has described as “symbiotic.”
Workforce optimization with agentic AI
Capita’s AI Catalyst Lab is applying Agentforce to workforce management as well, using AI to assign shifts, track performance, and align staff with projects based on skills and availability.
“We like to say that the Business Process Outsourcing market is like ground zero for agentic AI. It truly is where big, complex, hairy workflows and processes meet all this Intelligent Automation and with a human in the loop. So if agentic is going to go anywhere, it has to really transform this market,” Hernandez noted.
For clients like Transport for London and the UK Armed Forces, this will lead to quicker, data-driven decision-making in particularly sensitive areas.
The AI does not replace humans; rather, it enhances their activities by presenting employees with problems that need to be solved and analyzing the correlation of real-time data.
The technology also addresses ethical and governance concerns. The parameters of the data used by Agentforce are set by them; they have fixed guidelines on what to do or escalate, and they have audit logs.
Hernandez explained that this is the critical aspect in regulated industries. It is not only efficiency, he says, but also trust-building.
Investing in future-ready talent
To prepare its workforce, Capita is investing in AI academies and apprenticeships, ensuring staff can thrive alongside AI tools. Hernandez sees this as critical for the UK’s economy, citing government projections of an £80 billion (US$92 billion) AI boost by 2035.
Hernandez said, “I think gloom has been overdone. We live in a challenging world, but this is the right medicine for the future, for the economy.”
