Business Process Automation is a good thing, and not just to generate efficiency for your company but it is demanded / expected by your customers as well. Is that right?
Hmmm, not always.
Back in 2022 a Gartner Survey revealed that “80% of Executives Think Automation Can Be Applied to Any Business Decision”. So, in another words 80% of the business leaders believed that ANY, – means 100% -, of business decisions can be automated in a certain way.
After two years I must admit that I was – and I am still – in the remaining 20% who believes there are certain business processes and related decisions that cannot be fully automated, – or make no sense to be automated.
And if you are enforcing automation in certain business processes, – especially in some select cases -, you can decrease your operation efficiency and may destroy your customer experience.
Here are the 3 most common mistakes you need to avoid when you are planning to automate your customer service related business processes:
#1 – Automation that makes your process more difficult or effort consuming
Imagine how many times you have been faced with a challenge – as a customer – where you have had to go through an automated service process with a cases that needed an exception handling. While the whole automation can work fluently with all average cases, you may get serious challenges with your case that need certain exception handing.
The last resort here is that there is always a human agent that can understand the complexity and the unique nature of your case and is able to resolve it through flexible processing.
We tend to forget that our lives (and most technology around us) are becoming increasingly more complex over time, rather than simplified, and that’s why the related business processes may need more exception handling.
Once everything is set up correctly and until your case can be managed through standard processes you are fine and everything can be fully automated, but when something goes wrong most automated systems fall apart and are incapable of resolving the problem without human intervention.
Advice: Put your business processes into two buckets. A) the processes that need no exception handling, B) the processes need to handle exceptions. You might be surprised how many of your processes will fall into bucket B) (if any). Then think about how to detect (as early as possible) the need for exception handling and design a process in a way that can divert these cases to a human advisor or to a dynamic processing engine as early as possible to avoid customer frustration and unnecessary spend of time and cost on both sides.
#2 – Automation that disregards your customers’ preferences
Many customers I have spoken with reported “I don’t call a human agent unless it is really important and urgent, and I believe that is the most effective way to resolve my issue.”
Why do we (the business process owners) think that we can better decide when the customer need a human touch?
Honestly it does not really matter why our customers are calling our contact center while many automated self-service options are offered. If they choose this contact method, they have already considered that could be an easier, faster, cheaper, or more secure way to do business with us instead of going through our automated systems.
If the customers often bypass your exposed self-service channels, they have already sent a clear signal that your business automation solution is inefficient, frustrating, effort consuming or unsafe, so you better off to trust their honest judgement and keep up with their needs.
Enforcing automation when the process itself is annoying, unproductive or time consuming is the best way to lose customers quickly.
Advice: Analyze (ask your customers) why they are choosing the human agent support instead of the self-service channels, then design (re-design) your automated systems in a way that can be voluntarily selected by the customers. Also consider offering human agent support whenever the customer believes that could be more efficient. Your customers will choose this option only if they believe that could ease their process, then you can fine tune your process automation system until the number of the human agent diverted contacts goes down naturally.
#3 – Automation that disregards your customers’ emotions
“How can I tell the computer that I am in a critical situation and need immediate support” – said one of my clients who was forced to go through an automated system while she was emotionally overloaded in an incredibly stressful situation.
Automated systems (and bots) are good with many things, but they have no capability (yet) to sense, understand and manage human emotions. Even if you have the best designed process automation system in place it still can’t feel the customers’ emotions, can’t express empathy, and can’t adjust the business process accordingly.
These real-life examples show that no business process automation system can be successful without a seamless cooperation with human agents and no human agents’ time can be efficient without automated systems that can offload a mass amount of work from agent through automation.
If you are tired to start with baby steps and want to do a Big Bang (automate an entire process at once), rather than starting with an MVP, select a partner who does not just have the right product, but also has accumulated industry specific customer service design experiences. That can certainly speed up your digital transformation and ensure the desired ROI.
Advice: Use a clever combination (well designed and well-sequenced) automated and human assisted business process steps and connect them through junction points where the customers can decide if they want to continue using the automated system or think this is the time when better to contact to a human agent directly.
These real-life examples showing that no business process automation system can be successful without a seamless cooperation with human agents and no use human agents’ time can be efficient without automated systems that can offload a mass amount of work from agent through automation.
The cooperation scenarios between human agents and self-service applications need to be mapped out cleverly (always from the customers perspective) to ensure the highest possible efficiency without sacrificing customer experiences. And this is a never-ending fine-tuning process that always starts with an agile and dynamic process automation engine that can adopt the frequent changes quickly without high IT effort.
And this is not just about the capability of the process automation engine. It is also about the adequate experience design behind the processes.
If you are tired to start with baby steps and want to do a Big Bang (automate an entire process at once), rather than starting with an MVP, select a partner who not just have the right product, but also gathered industry specific customer service design experiences. That can certainly speed up your digital transformation and ensure the desired ROI.
Tibor Vass
CMO of Eccentex
www.eccentex.com
If you’d like to see how Business Automation can support your processes schedule a Demo with our experts.
