In a race to satisfy ever increasing and more sophisticated customer demands, global businesses at large are acknowledging the need to expand their digital capabilities. With this in mind, it's no surprise that the market has seen a steady growth in the adoption of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), which is predicted to reach a market value of BN 98.4$ globally by 2020. The era of immediacy is upon us and the market's demand for instant responsiveness is intensifying. This is confirmed by eMarketer's prediction that the number of chat app users worldwide will reach 2 billion and represent 80% of smartphone users by 2018.
It only seems natural for instant chat and Robotic Process Automation to come together in contributing towards the customer self-service revolution. Fully integrated into backend systems, robotic automation has the capability to bring more cognitive intelligence to chatbots by executing bespoke customer requests. This deepens the cognitive ability of the chatbots to handle a greater volume of customer requests in real time. The emergence of more intelligent chatbots is just the start of expanding the 24-hour customer self-service domain, giving customers the flexibility to interact with service centers within a timeframe of their choice. What's more, according to a Forbes prediction, 38% of organizations believe that AI and robots will be "fully implemented" in their companies within 5 years.
From an internal organizational perspective, employees today are expected to utilize a number of different applications in order to address a single customer request. The result is a longer response time and fragmented service delivery. The joint functionality of chatbots and RPA combined, alleviates the burden experienced by the human workforce brought on by repetitive, mundane and low value admin driven tasks. The age of immediacy does not require human employees to process back office admin tasks but rather requires focused human attention to deal with complex and sensitive customer driven issues.
Here is a real-life scenario illustrating how the chatbot and robotic automation dynamic works in reality:
A customer sends a request via instant chat to the chatbot asking to send his/her insured mobile phone in for repairs. The chatbot responds, requesting the customers' insurance number. After the customer keys in the insurance number, the chatbot sends this info to the NICE RPA bot, instructing it to execute the necessary actions. The RPA robot performs the following tasks in real-time:
- Extracts the client information and matches it to the insurance details
- Allocates the closest service center to the customers residence
- Generates a shipping slip barcode
- Generates and sends a confirmation e-mail to the customer with all the relevant information
- Delivers the relevant information to the chatbot in order to conclude interaction
The chatbot concludes the customer interaction by informing the customer that an e-mail will be sent to them with a shipping slip to be used at a mobile repair service center close to their place of residence.
As these service and process automation bots become more cognitive, they will not only automate the repetitive, predictable operational processes, but will do so more intelligently by continually learning from human input. Having said that, the human workforce still plays a critical role in service operations. While intelligent cognitive robots are performing some customer facing and back office tasks, the human workforce is fully present to deal with more complex high value driven issues. This combination provides a powerful service differentiator to organizations who wish to attain new levels of process efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Watch this video and see how our bots just got cognitive: