Let’s do a quick audit together. How much of your team’s time is spent doing highly repetitive, manual tasks?
If you’re a customer experience leader then there’s a good chance that your thinking of a relatively high number.
At one point in my career, we estimated that over 50% of a contact center employee’s day was spent working on repeat. Copy and paste info from one system to another; send Form D-38 to customers following a specific inquiry; initiate back-office processes by clicking through a series of screens; insert other monotonous tasks here. You get the picture. Heck, you’re probably shuttering thinking about it right now.
If we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s a poor use of a person’s time and talent. Not to mention the company’s money. It seems like our customers, our companies, and our employees would be better served if we had our most expensive resources (our people) working on the complicated and nuanced interactions. And repetitive, manual tasks aren’t just costly for us to complete by human resources, they’re mind-numbing, demotivating, and absolutely unfulfilling. When you really sit and think about it, you’ve got to wonder if there’s a better way, right?
Turns out that there is a better way and an increasing number of businesses are turning to it and transforming the way they do work.
Enter Robotic Process Automation.
What is Robotic Process Automation?
“Robotic process automation (RPA) is a productivity tool that allows a user to configure one or more scripts (which some vendors refer to as “bots”) to activate specific keystrokes in an automated fashion. The result is that the bots can be used to mimic or emulate selected tasks (transaction steps) within an overall business or IT process. These may include manipulating data, passing data to and from different applications, triggering responses, or executing transactions. RPA uses a combination of user interface interaction and descriptor technologies. The scripts can overlay on one or more software applications.”
Source: Gartner, Inc.
TLDR; Bots exist that can reliably automate those repetitive tasks that we discussed above. If it’s something that is completed with the click of a mouse or the stroke of a key, RPA can handle it.
Examples of tasks that RPA can do include:
- Log into any application
- Move files and folders
- Read and write to databases
- Scrape data from the internet
- Extract content from documents, emails, and forms
- Open emails and attachments
- Make calculations
The case for saving time, money, and frustration is clear to leaders who’ve explored even one use case within their business. It’s probably the reason why robotic process automation is one of the fastest-growing technology categories in the market too. But, just because RPA is right for one business, that doesn’t mean it’s right for all.
Here are five questions to ask yourself to determine if Robotic Process Automation can help your business.
RPA: Five Questions To Ask Yourself
- Do any teams or departments within your organization handle manual-heavy processes, data entry, or repeatable tasks frequently?
- Do compliance requirements and the need to maintain 100% data accuracy factor heavily into the success of your business?
- Do you process large quantities of incoming documents that require reading, data extraction, and data entry of information by employees?
- Do your contact center employees require the use of multiple tabs and systems, negatively impacting contact resolution efficiency and handling times?
- Are you currently processing large volumes of invoices manually?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then it’s worth exploring the use case for RPA in your business.
At CX Effect, our team of advisors is available to help build out your business case, at no cost to you. We’re able to take you on a deeper dive into RPA and help you to better understand how it could improve your customer experience. Click here to have a member of our team contact you to share more.
Not ready for a conversation, but looking to further explore robotic process automation? Watch this CX Simplified where I interviewed one of our partners to learn more about the basics of RPA.