Every business has processes that can be automated from start to finish by an unattended robot, working without human intervention, 24/7, without errors, collecting and executing tasks from a queue. But what about the business processes that have decision points requiring human intervention or communication skills?
This is where attended desktop automation comes into play. Desktop Automation in its truest form, comprises software robots residing within each employee's desktop. The robots have cognitive intelligence enabling them to navigate the complexities and dynamism of the desktop environment. This robust functionality enables them to respond to events in real-time and provide assistance or real-time guidance to the employee when they need it.
These robots can mimic human actions, from copying and pasting information, to data inputting, and even opening up applications and performing actions. They can even exceed what a human could achieve on their own, by gathering and analyzing large amounts of data 100% accurately and rapidly in real-time, and taking actions based on the results. All of these activities can occur on an employee's desktop, in the background, triggered by any type of event, such as a button click, switching tabs, checking a field has specific data or even a complex combination of multiple events.
Desktop Automation - The Ultimate Synergy between Employees and their Digital Assistants
In enterprises, where customer service representatives often have to juggle multiple tasks, (talking to customers, sourcing information, inputting data etc.), real-time attended automation certainly lightens the load. It allows those employees to focus on talking to a customer, whilst tasks like looking for relevant data in multiple applications or figuring out what the best next step to take is, are done for them in real-time.
With this approach, the human and the desktop robot are working side by side, in full collaboration, with humans overseeing the execution of each activity. Humans can then focus on more interesting, valuable work, while also being empowered to make the best decisions in real-time.
Large businesses that run attended desktop automation robots, enabling their employees to make the most of their expertise and focus on the essence of their jobs, report high customer and employee satisfaction and operational efficiency which leads to a better bottom line. One of the UK's largest mobile network providers, has automated 32 processes across a wide variety of process types, realizing a saving of over 4 million seconds per month in automations alone. Using both attended and unattended automations, there is also the expectation of delivering about £1 million per year of additional benefits from these processes.
Attended automation
Attended automation can also identify events and processes that require training, enabling managers to take the necessary steps to improve the employee's performance. For example, if the employee is required to read a disclaimer as part of the call but the disclaimer text was only open for two seconds, the system can detect that it is most likely that the employee did not read the disclaimer, and an alert will be sent to the manager in real-time.
Managers, in turn, will be better equipped to focus their limited time on delivering tailored coaching and support. This will help employees further hone their customer service skills, as they focus on delivering the sort of service that builds loyalty and satisfaction, and not on mundane, routine tasks.
Deciding on what to automate can be a huge challenge. With customer expectations constantly changing and new channels of engagement emerging, deciding on where to begin, as well as the long-term plan is not always straightforward. This is where attended desktop automation can again help, this time by gathering process information to uncover further opportunities to optimize those processes in real-time. The possibilities are endless when you realize the true power of attended automation and break out from the traditional automation mindset.