“It’s no longer just about saving money. It’s about resilience and gaining an edge,” states a 2020 Bain & Company report assessing the use of automation in CX.
Indeed, use cases for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) go beyond automating transactional customer conversations through bots, back-office tasks, and desktop processes.
Nowadays, companies are weaving RPA into the wider contact center ecosystem and beyond to improve customer, business, and employee outcomes.
In this edition of the CX Today roundtable, our expert panelists discuss many of these next-generation use cases of RPA, giving tips to companies for taking their CX automation strategy to the next level.
This month, our expert panelists are:
- Wayne Butterfield – Global Head of Intelligent Automation Solutions at ISG Automation
- Charlie Mitchell – Senior Editor at CX Today
- Mark Bunnell – Chief Operations Officer at NuWave Communications
Below, they answer several questions to delve deeper into the current state of contact center automation, sharing lots of helpful advice for crafting an automation strategy along the way.
What Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Trend Most Excites You and Why?
Butterfield: Using RPA in conjunction with AI is the current trend that excites me most. Although RPA is very strong at moving data from one place/system to another, it’s limited in that it needs rules and structure to be helpful.
The addition of AI provides lots of depth to the potential of RPA, as AI can help provide the decision-making capability that it is otherwise missing.
Mitchell: One of the biggest benefits of an automation strategy is that companies can take an incremental approach, seizing low-hanging fruit use cases, measuring the success of each innovation, and building confidence in the technology.
Kickstarting such a project is becoming easier thanks to the emergence of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon within the marketplace, helping to lower the price point at which companies can adopt RPA technologies. With this increased accessibility to RPA, more companies will likely experiment with RPA and exploit its capabilities for streamlining processes across the enterprise.
Bunnell: The trend that most excites us is the switch from a standard legacy phone system to a more resilient and feature-rich phone system like Microsoft Teams with built-in RPA.
For example, a Microsoft Teams environment offers embedded analytics capabilities, routing, and even cognitive services that allow companies to more easily harness the power of automation.
Give an Example of a CX Solution That is Improving Thanks to RPA
Butterfield: The CRM is receiving a higher usage of RPA than most other tools. Sometimes seen as a sticky plaster, Attended RPA in the CRM streamlines long-winded processes, particularly in the contact center.
These processes, such as form filling, often take a while and require agents to put the customer on hold. Yet, RPA completes such tasks in just a few seconds, which is excellent for the agent, customer, and the business.
Mitchell: Automation now sits at the heart of many contact center solutions. For example, the technology helps automate quality scoring within performance management systems. In the WFM system, it also allows resource planners to automate the testing of various forecasting algorithms and much of the scheduling process. It is even part of recruitment software, sifting through CVs and pinpointing relevant applications.
Yet, perhaps the most exciting example is in the IVR, as the technology evolves from cumbersome menu systems to intelligent bots that enhance routing processes and resolve complex queries. RPA enables this self-service triggering actions that will allow self-service flows, which the customer kickstarts using their voice alone. As such, customers can interact with only a smart speaker to solve their queries, not lifting a finger in the process.
Discover more about how voicebots are reimagining traditional IVR processes by reading our article: The Future of Voicebots: Much More Than an IVR Alternative
Bunnell: Tools like iPILOT – NUWAVE’s solution for Microsoft Teams Telephony and Voice Service – help bring robust automation tools to provision users and procure devices while enabling contact centers to manage their entire voice infrastructure in a single user interface (UI).
Not only is deployment time low for such a solution, but it also reduces the skilled labor requirements for the provision and management of the network.
Share an Example of an Automation Use Case and How It Drives Productivity in the Contact Center and Beyond
Butterfield: The best example for me is not a new one, but it is still a killer example. Indeed, automating Sim Swaps while at O2 was a game-changer for us, taking a critical process that customers demanded a much swifter response on and enabling a much quicker resolution.
The process reduced agent handling time on the phone and reduced repeat calls almost to zero.
Mitchell: Just before the pandemic, I visited the Gousto contact center in London, which – at the time – was the winner of the Small Contact Centre of the Year Award at The European Contact Centre and Customer Service Awards.
Interestingly, the Gousto team had set up automated live alerts regarding contact center performance across the business. As a result, department heads could see their actions’ impact on demand, contact center costs, and customer satisfaction in real-time.
By taking this approach, the contact center ensured shared responsibility for addressing pain points at a root-cause level and strategically enhanced efficiency throughout the enterprise.
Bunnell: By using the automation in iPILOT, anyone in the organization can now deploy, manage, and support an entire UC deployment remotely.
An integration with a CCaaS solution also unlocks a more collaborative customer experience. Meanwhile, the entire enterprise organization can now shift to a modern hybrid work environment, allowing complete elasticity and scale.
What Pitfalls Should Brands Be Wary of When Implementing Automation Technologies?
Butterfield: Like any significant change in CX strategy, automation technology alone will not transform operations. Change management and bringing the broader team on the journey are both critical in ensuring success.
Remember, automation changes the processes for employees as well as customers. Only with successful communications and bringing your people on the journey with you can a CX team positively influence employee experiences.
Mitchell: When building a business case for a CX automation project, it is critical to analyze demand drivers to find opportunities to improve and remove contacts through RPA. Doing so enables the business to quantify ROI and identify the ideal automation applications.
However, be wary of using disposition data to analyze demand. In many cases, it is unreliable, as agents choose random ticket tags that do not relate to the contact reason. Such a poor practice is commonplace throughout the industry. So, coach and calibrate their use while ensuring each agent understands what each code represents and looking out for new additions.
Only by going through such a process can contact centers accurately forecast RPA. Yet, operations may also automate that process through the use of speech analytics.
Bunnell: Choosing a vendor with the skill, experience, and first-rate technology to manage an automation project is tricky. Take the transition to Microsoft Teams Voice as an example. Not just any carrier can do it. Ideally, they will have the right voice capability, engineering capability, certifications, and time-tested API integrations for the system to work seamlessly.
At NuWave, our philosophy is show don’t tell. So, when walking clients through a demo, we show them exactly how to manage the system. We have training tools, videos, documentation, and certified engineers to walk customers through a smooth process.
Catch up on the previous edition of our roundtable series here: CX from Anywhere
