I went from answering calls to testing AI

14 March 2026

“I thought I would stay for six months, or at most, maybe a year. Just long enough to get some work experience during my gap year before university.

Well, it has been over six years – and I’m still with DBS.

I started out in the customer centre, as a Customer Service Officer (CSO), taking calls and helping people with their day‑to‑day banking needs.

Then, I moved into mentoring, guiding new joiners as they found their footing. And just when I started to feel comfortable, something new that piqued my interest would come along.
New opportunities. New challenges. New things to try.

So year after year, I stayed at the bank.

But that didn’t mean putting my studies on hold. Instead, I found a way to do both.

I enrolled in a part-time bachelor's degree in business studies, which I’ll be completing later this year.
Today, my role has evolved into a Gen AI Evaluator. When I told my family, they were surprised. To them, AI belonged in young tech startups – not in a bank that’s been around since the 1960s.

My job is to test and evaluate AI tools used in the customer centre – from those already supporting our teams today to new ones still taking shape.One of my earliest projects was providing feedback on the CSO Assistant, a Gen AI virtual assistant tool that today supports our 1,000 CSOs with over 250,000 queries monthly.

Because I had worked as a CSO myself, I drew on that experience to consider whether the AI-generated responses would truly support how CSOs work.Beyond pilots and initial testing, I review and evaluate AI-powered tools that are already live – including our digibot chatbot, going through customer interactions every day to ensure responses remain accurate and relevant.

Then there’s the more experimental side of the work.
As the bank continues to innovate new tools, I’m currently helping to train a voice bot for customers – spending hours running simulated customer interactions, putting myself in our customers’ shoes and considering the many different ways a question might be phrased.In one of my recent modules in school, we looked at real-world case studies on how organisations are scaling and embedding AI into everyday work. Much of it felt familiar, because I was already living” this at DBS.

During lectures, the focus is on the big picture – the high-level strategy and intent behind embracing AI. At work, I get to see what actually brings these concepts to life: the rigorous testing, the multiple checks, and all the other moving parts that are invisible to most.

School gave me the language for things I had already been practising at work. And work gave meaning to what I was learning in class.”

- Shafira Nurmuzaliffah bte Mohd Mydin-Watt, Gen AI Evaluator (Customer Centre)#HumansofDBS

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