Yeah, it will for sure, because most of the simple, repetitive things can be replaced by the bot, and that will give employees more time to spend on harder cases, and it will for sure decrease the closure time of the simple requests that need to be done. And we can already see the effect of those.
It depends on how the automation is managed. I am not against the automation at all, not at all, but if automation means as it is, the last fashion, bots will reply to a call, of course, it won’t improve the quality of the customer service, but if automation means that we are not sending one by one the dunning letters, because a bot will do it for us, yes, it will result in an improved customer service because the customer will receive a punctual email, because at 9 o’clock the bot will send out the dunning letters. But if then the dunning letters shouldn’t have been sent, because the customer already paid, then the bot did not check the general ledger, this is a problem. So, it depends.
You’re supposed to have the transaction processed faster than human at 24/7. So the answer would be yes. I don’t know how it will be but it is yes for now.
Yes, definitely. Customer service is a service department, as you know. So if you take of some routine work, which can be done by RPA, and team will concentrate more, have more time, of course, it will have great improvement.
If automation is done correctly, definitely yes. Because automation in our case is not to replace us, but to assist us. So possibility of human error is definitely less. Because if you want to feed the robot with all the information necessary and all the process details which are necessary to work, from that moment the chance of having issues is much less than with a human. Because with a human, there is, of course, a higher failure possibility. But also human aspects, I mean, if someone is not really concentrated or not feeling well, even such things, then it might be that error happen much more, which could have a negative experience on customers. Only if you think that you are having your fiftieth issue on a day, and you can’t really think about it like it was your first one in the day, even if you have to, should do so, but normally you can’t. And this is something which is not the case with robots, because they just do the work, so, in the end, if the automation process has been implemented well, then it’s definitely improving customer service.
This is not an easy, white or black answer, because on the one hand yes this will result in improved customer service because of the faster reply and this can be really tainted by the facts that the bots are misbehaving, but I still think it’s worth to use the bots. And make some occasional mistakes, even in production. So the answer is a clear yes.
It can, in many ways, depending on how smart you use automation. For example, if you want your customers to get a faster response for simple queries or questions, you can have automation like bots or other automation tools to handle the request from the customers, maybe by chat or by calls, that’s one example. So to me, yes it can, but you need to be smart in choosing the solution.
If someone wouldn’t have to take care of activities that are taking certain amount of time regardless of it, half hour and six hours a day, if someone doesn’t have to deal with these, then there should be something else, something more advanced or more analytical that the customer service representative can spend his or her time on. So, definitely that should result in a more sophisticated customer service or improved service. On the other hand, at this point, I am not quite sure we are expecting that it will be robotics purely bringing this improvement in the service level. It’s not because of robotics not being a good solution but definitely not everything can be addressed with the same RPA solution. It again links back to knowledge retention. So, it partly covers the picture, robotics and automation, it should result in an improved quality of service. On the other hand, to be honest, at this point, I do not really see it as happening, it’s not the fault of automation, and not the fault of RPA, but something that is the human factor, I would say. So, you can have like, ten or twenty automated processes working perfectly fine without any issues, but if some other skills, not necessarily technical skills related to using the robots, but other skills, are not in place, then it’s not fine in the customer representative mindset. So, automation should result in an improvement, but it’s not the only important factor here.
What does the industry say?
According to a Capgemini study, 63% of organizations have improved their customer service with the help of intelligent automation. It has resulted in improved response times, personalized service, 24/7 availability.
Other report by TCS found that those companies which invest in intelligent automation can not only cut their support costs, can provide proactive and even predictive customer service, boost loyalty and revenues, but also gather intelligence to improve future product designs.
Intelligent Automation Product Owner 