What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

If you are a person from the call center industry or any other it services you must have heard about Robotic Process Automation or RPA. It is nothing but a technology that plays a phenomenal role in automating the business process and taking over the manual or repetitive jobs which takes time and manpower. It increases efficiency by several times and internal resourced gets freed up so that the advisor availability can be increased and they can concentrate on more important tasks.

Sounds good, right? RPA basically comprises of action bots which take care of the administrative work which are repetitive in nature so that turnaround time can be minimized and the contact center agents have better productivity level. RPA also combines machine learning and artificial intelligence and this makes it ideal for back-office work of repetitive nature. However, nowadays it is also being used for handling complicated jobs as well.

Working Structure OF RPA Technology

RPA technology is of two types namely attended and unattended. Although their working is different from each other they are often used together as they are designed to handle different tasks. Unattended RPA is the smartest of all and it requires no human intervention. It is ideal for processes with low value and high volume which are dependent on speed, predictability, quality, and scalability. On the other hand attended RPA senses the needs of the advisors and make routine desktop tasks easier by providing proper advice, guidance and decision support to the advisors.

But wait…there’s more.

You need to remember that even if you implement both the RPA technology it will not automate the total process. It only automates specific tasks within the entire process so that the task can be completed faster in an error-free manner. One of the important things that you need to remember within RPA technology is that they are set up in a way so that it can identify a triggered event and work accordingly. Once the process is triggered the software begins a series of automated processes which handles the rest. This is the reason RPA has become so popular in bpo companies.

Benefits of RPA Technology

Maximization of Employee Engagement:

RPA will result in an improvement of employee experience not only in the call centers but also in other business processes as well. For example, in order to calculate payroll, you need to process it manually every month and it continues like that for years. But with the implementation of RPA, the entire process can become far easy to manage.

And it doesn’t stop there.

All the details required to calculate payroll from the timesheet can be extracted using RPA and it can reduce manual workload substantially. The employees will be more charged up to work when there is an overall increase in efficiency and the processes become streamlined. This will definitely improve the overall growth of the organization and reduce turnover time to a great extent.

Increase in Employee Retention:

As RPA removes the daily, routine and boring tasks from the organizational workflow the customer service agents will get the opportunity to handle interesting and technical work and it will enhance the role of the agent in the office. This will definitely play a significant role in improving job satisfaction of the agents and they will become more inclined to stay in the company, therefore, resulting in employee retention.

Here’s the thing.

You can also implement RPA for agent assist so that they can have ready access to the knowledge base or data source in case they are having a difficult time finding answers to any questions asked by the customers.

Tracking Customer Behavior:

Contact centers are always in search of new ways to meet the needs of the customers and satisfy them. With the implementation of artificial intelligence in RPA, it has become smart enough to detect any irregularity in the account activity of the customers and identify any tentative problems so that corrective actions can be taken as soon as possible. After that, an automatic warning or alert will be sent to the agent who can then contact the customer in order to provide proactive and excellent customer support.

Fewer Routine Activities:

RPA has great advantages for the agents as there will be less routine and tedious work which will definitely lead to fewer mistakes, lesser stress, and no backlogs. As RPA will remove the repetitive, routine and boring administrative tasks from the agents they will work in a free mind which will act as a motivating factor for them.

Look - That's not all.

If you analyze the transformation from a broader spectrum you will find out that the role of the agents will gradually change and they will remain much more engaged with the customers instead of doing boring routine work. This will automatically increase the overall productivity and performance of the organization.

Improved Accuracy:

RPA can go a long way in improving the accuracy and service quality of contact centers. As most of the task will get automated there will be very little scope of errors and thus no risk of losing the reputation of the organization. You will be able to provide customer service with full accuracy which will lead to a higher level of customer satisfaction.

Here’s another thing.

As the entry-level processes will be handled by smart bots the customer service agents will be able to concentrate on more critical issues and will be able to keep full attention to the problems of the customers.

Thus to conclude we can say that RPA is a revolutionary technology that can change the way business operations take place and with further integration of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning it has become more advanced than ever. However, you need to have a complete idea about the technology before its implementation so that you remain aware of the entire operating procedure. This article will surely help you a lot in understanding the RPA technology so that you can adopt and implement this technology in your organization without any problems at all.