9 Best RPA Implementation Practices for Contact Centers

Once considered as a destination to register complaints, inquire & track orders, and get basic information about a product or service, the role of a Call Center has evolved by leaps and bounds. It is now considered as an indispensable part of the business with great importance, if not more but surely equivalent, that of core business functions like Marketing, Finance, Accounting, Manufacturing, or others. The roles and functionalities of the Call Center or Contact Center have been significantly increased in recent years and also become diverse.

Today, with increased penetration of telecom services, higher usage of mobile phones, advances in internet services, and rapid industrialization, the volume of call center inquiries has been greatly increased. Further, expectations of customers from call centers have also changed dramatically. They want a quick resolution of their concerns without waiting too long and also in a hassle-free manner.

Also, this industry is dealing with various other challenges like:

• Huge requirement of people for manual processes
• High labor cost
• Increased competition
• Multiple logins for accurate data gathering
• Huge piles of data management
• Reducing errors and managing compliances
• Accurate reporting & analytics
• Increased customer expectations but bad customer experience
• Slow turnaround time

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a solution to help tackle these challenges with ease that the call center industry faces today. Due to this reason, its adoption has increased over the years and more and more contact center players are now recognizing its potential to make business gains. But implementing RPA is not a cakewalk. You need a precise RPA implementation strategy to achieve desired automation goals.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is a complex task that must be handled with precision from the very early stage. It is a widely accepted norm in the RPA industry to automate, test, and deploy a small business process first before making a big bank digital reform. It is considered as a best practice for RPA deployment as it gives you enough space to adapt, learn, and modify RPA bots with minimal chances of RPA failure.

Attended, unattended, and hybrid are three popular types of robotic process automation (RPA) categories. Experts believe that while doing a transition towards automation, starting with Attended RPA bots (where certain human intervention required) proves more beneficial.  It offers various benefits like:

• Lighter IT Infrastructure
• Fewer Security Concerns
• Faster ROI
• Easy Employee Buy-in

Best RPA implementation involves agility at the core of an automation program. Your RPA solution delivery should be flexible and capable enough to find inaccuracies & mismatched functionalities at an earlier stage. Taking feedback and quickly adapting the necessary changes into the RPA system is very much necessary to implement a robust and effective robotic process automation (RPA) solution in the customer service space. It helps in continual improvement without any hassles and paves the way to gain better throughput.

RPA is a newer technology but not all people are well aware of its wide-ranging and long-lasting business benefits. In reality, more than its advantages, misconceptions are spread around automation. This often leads to resistance from key stakeholders. It is thus imperative to obtain stakeholder buy-in for the smooth roll-out of RPA. Best RPA implementation can never be materialized without having a strong collaborative engagement amongst executives, management, and key investors of the company. Involve everyone in the process, take suggestions, clear doubts and explain the automation blueprint to be executed. It’s a winning formula to gain the trust of all stakeholders.

Just because you have RPA tools does not mean that you can automate anything and get good business results. Picking the right business processes is a key for RPA success. In a contact center, there are many business processes, but pick those first that are rule-based, high-in-volume, mundane, and time-consuming. Don’t pick such processes at the first instance where critical decision-making is required. Run a process discovery campaign and check which business processes are really feasible for automation. Moreover, your RPA implementation strategy should also include an analysis of ROI at an earlier stage. As economic feasibility is very important for RPA sustainability.

Yes. You read it right. RPA is not a divine solution to solve all your business problems. It is discovered with a certain purpose. It benefits businesses but has its limitations. You need to first understand its scope as some people have hyped its usage beyond imagination.

Instead, think of RPA as a medium to gain greater:

• Efficiency
• Productivity
• Simplification of Processes
• Productivity
• Employee and Customer Satisfaction
• Quality Offering
• Profitability
• Accuracy
• Process Visibility
• Data Security

It is meant to achieve the above-listed things.

Select the right KPIs and monitor them on a frequent basis to gauge the success of the RPA implementation strategy. It is important to analyze whether RPA is delivering the expected business value or not. Based on contact center use cases, you can define your KPIs. Some of the important ones to be tracked are:

• Average Handle Time (AHT)
• Average After Call Work Time
• First Call Resolution
• Customer Satisfaction Score
• Average Time in Queue
• Net Promoter Score
• Agent Utilization Rate
• Service Level

It’s not a fun thing to undermine compliance regulation work. Many companies act like this. But remember, doing so can lead you to pay heavy penalties and could also give a bad reputation to the brand name. Therefore get professional help and use necessary software to comply with rules and regulations. With the help of good tools, you can get automated notification regarding any violation, and by acting swiftly, you can help avoid paying legal fines.

Take professional help from RPA solution providers to create more awareness about RPA. Educate employees about automation and let them take experience on different RPA tools to be used. It creates greater confidence amongst employees and enables a smooth RPA transition. Also, set up a 24/7 monitoring team to ensure business continuity. Always try to pick an RPA vendor that is committed to support your inhouse maintenance team anytime in case of any unfortunate/unexpected eventuality.

Today, in a digitalized world, the expectations from contact centers have changed drastically. Today, it represents the business values of an organization. Through its services, customer experience is evaluated. Seeing the growing complexities surrounding contact centers, digitalization is the only key to manage expectations with ease. Consult any RPA expert about call center automation and make your business process more efficient than ever.

You can reap enormous benefits through RPA implementation but just do it the right way. It is the key to success.