In the rush to deploy generative artificial intelligence across the customer experience sector, many enterprises have used automation for a single purpose: to deflect customer contact and cut immediate operational costs. But for Gabriele Moretti, Founder and Chairman of international customer management group Covisian, this approach misses the true value of modern technology. Led by Gabriele, the multinational group—which handles over one million daily interactions across dozens of global offices—is pioneering an alternative model where advanced AI is designed to support and elevate human professionals rather than replace them.

Gabriele, an engineer by background, has steered Covisian’s growth by treating technology as an orchestration tool. Under his leadership, the group has moved away from fragmented, automated platforms toward human-supervised ecosystems that unify cloud integration, real-time data, and generative AI. This strategy is built on the reality that while automation can absorb massive operational loads, human judgment and empathy remain the critical touchpoints for building genuine trust with customers and patients under pressure.

In this conversation with The Consulting Report, Gabriele discusses the high failure rate of early AI pilot projects, the operational reality behind Covisian's proprietary "AI Supervised" model, and how a unique literary metaphor shapes his view of modern technological transitions.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

“Efficiency and care are not opposing forces. When properly designed, they reinforce one another.”

The Consulting Report: Can you provide an overview of Covisian’s core areas of specialization?

Gabriele Moretti: We are a group of companies dedicated to transforming the world of customer experience. In essence, our work consists of rebuilding the bridge between organizations and the people they serve—a bridge that over time has often been weakened by the very technologies that were meant to simplify it.

Everything we do starts from a simple conviction: when a customer reaches out to a company, that moment should be regarded as an opportunity rather than a burden. Yet for many years the opposite logic has often prevailed, with technology used to create distance, deflect contacts, and postpone resolution.

Our approach is based on a different premise. Artificial intelligence represents an extraordinary technological capability, but its true value emerges only when combined with the judgment, responsibility, and empathy of human professionals. The objective is therefore not merely to automate processes, but to strengthen the relationship between organizations and their customers or patients.

Today we bring this vision to more than 4,500 active clients worldwide. What we demonstrate in practice is that efficiency and care are not opposing forces. When properly designed, they reinforce one another and produce a more sustainable model of service across every interaction and every channel.

“Technology should not remove humans from the relationship with the customer. It should elevate their role.”

The Consulting Report: What makes Covisian’s approach to customer experience distinct?

Gabriele Moretti: Our differentiation begins with a conviction that runs against much of the current market logic: in customer service, technology should not remove humans from the relationship with the customer. It should elevate their role.

For nearly thirty years we have observed how customer service has evolved from a single channel, the telephone, into an increasingly fragmented ecosystem of platforms, tools, and automated systems. In many organizations this complexity has produced a paradox: automation designed primarily to deflect customers rather than to serve them.

We believe the real transformation lies in overcoming that fragmentation.

With Smile.CX, we have designed a model that unifies generative AI, cloud integration, advanced data, and operational expertise into a single operational environment. In this architecture, artificial intelligence never operates alone. It functions within a human-orchestrated system, where professionals remain constantly in the loop, supervising both the interaction and the behavior of the AI itself.

This model allows agents to monitor and guide multiple interactions simultaneously, intervening where empathy, judgment, and context are required, while automation handles the operational load. At the same time, the platform measures customer experience in real time, ensuring that efficiency never comes at the expense of service quality.

In this sense, our ambition is not simply to deploy automation. It is to introduce a new operating model for customer service—one in which humans, data, and artificial intelligence work together under continuous supervision, transforming fragmented contact centers into truly intelligent customer experience ecosystems.

The Consulting Report: Can you share a client example that demonstrates Covisian’s capabilities?

Gabriele Moretti: In healthcare, the stakes rise higher still. Vulnerable citizens navigating urgent medical needs are routinely met with cold automated barriers. MediCX was our answer to that failure of humanization. Because at its core, that is what MediCX is: not only a platform, but the humanization of the patient experience itself.

When we evaluate the impact of our work, we do not limit ourselves to measuring operational efficiency. The most meaningful results emerge when a different technological and organizational approach allows an entire service model to evolve.

One project that reflects this philosophy involved the Italian subsidiary of a major international insurance group operating a roadside assistance division that manages more than 210,000 critical interactions every year. The challenge was a familiar one: how to provide reliable support to people in moments of vulnerability while operating at a very large scale.

We introduced our proprietary platform, Smile.CX, not as a substitute for human judgment, but as a way to strengthen it. Customer service professionals were supported by an AI co-pilot capable of simplifying processes and providing real-time insights, allowing them to focus entirely on the person seeking help.

The operational results were significant: handling times were reduced by half, productivity increased substantially, and customer satisfaction grew by more than 22%.

The Consulting Report: How would you describe your firm's culture?

Gabriele Moretti: At Covisian, culture is not a statement displayed on a wall or a slide presented during onboarding. It represents the underlying system that guides how we think, how we make decisions, and how we interact with clients and colleagues.

We summarize this philosophy in three words: tech, people, and smiles. The sequence is deliberate.

Tech represents our engine. Throughout history, organizations that endured were not simply those that adopted new tools, but those that learned how to shape and reinterpret them. For this reason we invest significantly in research and development, designing technologies that allow us to anticipate how customer operations will evolve.

People are our heart. In our model, technology does not replace people, it amplifies their capabilities. Our professionals become the architects of automation itself. This is where we see the real opportunity: transforming customer care into an intelligent ecosystem where humans and AI work together to create lasting value.

Smiles represent the outcome of this balance. When technology and human judgment operate in harmony, complexity becomes manageable, interactions become relationships, and service becomes a meaningful experience. We are not simply optimizing processes. We are building an easier world.

“Generative AI automation is considerably more complex than the market initially promised.”

The Consulting Report: Has the increasing prevalence of AI dramatically changed the types of client mandates you are hired for?

Gabriele Moretti: Not dramatically, but progressively. What we are witnessing is not a sudden disruption but the gradual integration of artificial intelligence into the operational fabric of customer service.

Generative AI automation is considerably more complex than the market initially promised. According to research from MIT, more than 95% of pilot projects between 2023 and 2025 failed to deliver concrete results. The challenge is particularly evident in conversational processes, where language, context, and human nuance play a decisive role.

For this reason our approach, the AI Supervised (AIS) model, is based on transition rather than disruption. In this model the human professional is never replaced, but progressively evolves: initially supervising the system and over time orchestrating an increasingly autonomous technological environment. Trust develops gradually: artificial intelligence earns autonomy through performance, while humans remain responsible for the moments in which judgment, empathy, and experience are essential.

From this philosophy emerges what we call SuperPower. It is not a technological feature, but a new way of defining the role of the customer care professional. No longer limited to managing a single conversation, these professionals become conductors of a broader human-AI collaboration, guiding multiple interactions simultaneously, fully present where emotion and judgment are required, and relying on artificial intelligence where it has proven capable of carrying the operational load.

Operating in this way allows us to achieve something that was previously unthinkable without generative AI: instead of reducing the number of calls handled by humans (call deflection), we reduce the time required to resolve them, generating substantial improvements in both Average Handle Time (AHT) and service quality.

The Consulting Report: Is there a book, mentor, or mantra that has influenced how you lead your organization?

Gabriele Moretti: When I reflect on the extraordinary evolution of generative artificial intelligence, I often think of a passage by Alessandro Baricco from his first novel, “Castles of Rage” (1991), of which I still keep a signed first edition.

In that book Baricco describes the early steam engine as a “machine of the impossible”, capable of producing something that had never previously existed: speed. He contrasts the visionary Rocket locomotive with another curious invention of the time, the “Cycloped”, essentially a horse running on a treadmill connected to wheels on rails. It is a powerful metaphor for the way the past often resists the future, producing awkward compromises in an attempt to preserve familiar models.

In many respects, generative AI represents today’s “impossible machine”. Yet many organizations still approach it like a modern Cycloped, layering it onto existing systems mainly to automate processes and reduce costs.

Our perspective is different. We see this technology as an opportunity to remove barriers between companies and their customers, and to build digital ecosystems where meaningful interaction becomes natural rather than difficult.