RPA, an acronym for Robotic Process Automation, refers to the use of software bots to automate the kinds of mundane, repetitive tasks that every business has to deal with. These are typically high-volume tasks that follow, step-by-step, the same process every time. RPA tasks might include tasks like data migration or data entry. Unlike a customer-facing role, these are most often the chores that customers never usually encounter, but which nonetheless have to be carried out in order for a business to function properly.
However, just because a task isn’t immediately visible to a customer doesn’t mean that RPA can’t have a big impact on the customer experience. In fact, deployed in the right way RPA can have a major positive effect on how customers experience your business.
Here are four ways Robotic Process Automation can lead to a better outcome for customers.
#1. Helping with customer service queries
Didn’t we just say that RPA isn’t visible to customers in the same way that, for example, a great front-of-house or relationship-focused human employee is? Yes, we did. But that doesn’t mean that RPA has to be limited to behind-the-scenes tasks that are far removed from the experience of customers. RPA can, for instance, can be used to speed up the process of responding to customer queries by utilizing chatbots as part of the process.
This can increase efficiency and speed by rapidly responding to customer queries (think seconds instead of minutes, hours, or even days) on a 24/7 basis, while also handling multiple queries at the same time. Humans can, meanwhile, be freed up to focus on the interactions that cannot be automated, which can also help reduce waiting times. Improved customer service can have a significant impact on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, helping reduce churn (the number of customers who stop using a service over a given period of time) as a result.
#2. Transforming customer outreach
Three words: Personalization. At. Scale. This is what RPA can offer, and it’s a potential game-changer. Anyone who has ever used mail-merge to send out large numbers of letters or emails without having to manually amend each one in turn will know how limited automation can help make customer outreach easier. RPA is significantly more advanced than your basic mail-merge technology, although the principle remains the same.
Much of the focus on RPA for companies is centered around saving money. In a more competitive retail environment than ever, that’s wholly understandable. But RPA can additionally be utilized to assist with the generating of revenue. RPA bots can be used to send out customized messages to customers, based on data such as when they require upgrades or renewals. As RPA bots get smarter, and able to draw on capabilities developed as part of artificial intelligence (AI) frameworks, these tools will only get better.
#3. Improving security
RPA bots have plenty of applications when it comes to cyber security, helping protect customer data in the process. One of the big areas they can be utilized for to protect against data leakage is by handling sensitive data for jobs like copying specific values from a database into an email, and other tasks that it might be safer to hand over to automation rather than having a person handle.
Another illustration of a security focused job for RPA involves maintaining and protecting the integrity of security logs which may need to be investigated in the case of an attack or, potentially, a breach. RPA can help with this logging process, thereby ensuring that the right records are there (and stored securely) whenever they are required by a human cybersecurity expert. Since a data breach has all kinds of negative impacts on customers, this cannot be overstated in terms of its importance.
#4. Happier human employees
A company is defined by the people who work for it. Happy, motivated employees will result in happy repeat customers. You can’t automate happiness, of course. But you can certainly use RPA to improve working conditions for employees: a far cry from the fear held by some about RPA being used to replace human workers.
By automating some of the dull, repetitive tasks human employees previously had to carry out, RPA can free them up to do other, more rewarding jobs instead. That includes more time spent focusing on the needs of customers. RPA Attended Automation tools, also referred to as Robotic Desktop Automation, can additionally help employees by providing smart contextual suggestions and monitoring that enable them to better carry out their jobs.
Ultimately, the goal of RPA is to augment human employees, certainly not to replace them. Properly implemented, RPA solutions will have a positive impact on your workforce; leading to motivated employees who want to stay in the job for longer. That, in turn, will result in a better experience for customers.
