16/10/2026
Can removals businesses move from experimenting with AI chatbots to using AI agents to get useful work done? That was the focus of keynote speaker James Poulter's presentation at the Young Movers Conference in Newcastle last week.
James described the shift from conversational AI (which gives you information to act on yourself) to agents that can carry out tasks. As he put it, “You talk to these things, and then they go and do the work for you.”
During his talk James demonstrated how quickly AI could produce something very useful with the right prompts, as he created a prototype planning tool for removals. Built with Claude (and the help of one of the delegates), he explained that it was designed to help a surveyor capture information while walking around a customer’s home. The proposed tool he showed the delegates, could record and transcribe details about items to move, any access challenges, dates and other considerations. It was he stressed, a demo, not a finished product, but it illustrated how a business might start testing ideas very quickly and with little effort.
AI, James said, was the perfect tool to tackle a task that is either repetitive, takes too long, or both. But to achieve the desired outcome, it needed to know certain key things: Who the tool is for, the relevant business context, any constraints and what a good result should look like. His advice was to “brief these agents as if you are briefing a new team member, and not like you were texting a friend!” He also recommended asking the AI to raise questions before it starts, so you can fill in missing context.
James encouraged delegates to think of working with AI as a loop; “Give it a clear brief, review what it produces and refine the result until it meets your need.”
He also urged businesses to be thoughtful about privacy, such as checking the settings and terms of the (ideally paid for) AI service, and not to upload information they would not be comfortable sharing outside of the company.
His wider message to the delegates was not that AI will replace them, as the people who move their customers, but rather that their businesses can explore using it for parts of the work that drain time, while people focus on judgement, relationships and leadership. “AI cannot lead us, that’s our job” he concluded.
AIMovers
