The balancing act: Automation & the human touch
The pandemic has fueled many changes impacting the customer experience, including a sharp increase in online transactions. As a result, it’s critical that companies are prepared to handle common issues that may arise, such as longer hold times for customer service. When not properly managed, brands are in jeopardy of frustrating their customers, which can damage a customer’s brand loyalty. Contact centers need to utilize technology like robotic process automation (RPA), to help call center representatives be productive and proactive when serving customers. With this technology, contact centers can streamline operations and leave the more mundane tasks for it to process. This in turn, allows representatives to devote more time to serving customers.
RPA in the Contact Center
Technology should be used to strengthen contact center teams. RPA does just this by helping representatives be productive and proactive, allowing them to focus on serving customers instead of handling routine tasks such as billing or claims processing. RPA can also be used to reply to customer inquiries online via chatbot. Chatbots are an RPA application that are used to handle tasks such as changing passwords or pulling up recent orders. Processes can be expedited and representatives can focus on complex tasks that require a human touch to resolve.
RPA vs. The Human Touch
RPA is expected to fully automate back-end and repetitive customer-facing activities as remote work continues to become the norm. Contact centers must balance RPA usage with human interactions throughout the inquiry process to deliver quality customer service. When customers are in need of support, they want a personal, fast, and easy experience. RPA can aid contact centers by allowing customers to have callbacks if they’re put on hold or sending shipping notifications. Contact centers must reply to customer inquiries using familiar channels with technology options, while leveraging representative’s expertise during an interaction. When brands rely on technology as a tool for well-trained representatives, they can handle the number of inbound, holiday inquiries, and claims because at the end of the day what truly creates stand-out customer service is the human factor. While the current increase in hold times is expected to remain the same, contact centers should still be able to provide a positive customer experience as long as representatives are prepared to manage expectations and provide superb customer service with the support of RPA.
This topic was recently explored by Fara Haron, Majorel’s Regional CEO, North America, Ireland, South East Asia, United Kingdom, Kenya and India in a piece entitled, “The RPA Challenge: How To Balance Automation With a Human Touch” for Toolbox
Related article: “Robotic Process Automation: What is it Good For?” on Toolbox
