Here’s a peek into my business process wish list—and, I suspect, yours as well:
I want my business to meet ever-changing customer expectations seamlessly; I want my team to balance human creativity with tech innovation effortlessly; and I want to do all that while maximizing ROI and spending less time and money on routine, repetitive work.
Sounds like a dream, right?
Fortunately, this dream can come true. With business process automation (BPA), you can leverage automation to scale while freeing up human talent to not just meet but also exceed customer expectations.
The Need for Business Process Automation in Customer Experience
Today’s businesses are faced with a seemingly impossible task. To be successful, you need to figure out how to deliver consistent, high-quality customer experiences. You need to do this swiftly and seamlessly, even as you navigate:
- The rapid changes in the digital landscape
- The team, data, and tech silos that have built up over time
- The hurdles of maintaining pace with customer demands
- The struggle against repetitive, time-consuming tasks
Can BPA be the silver bullet helping you move past these challenges?
With the right mindset and approach, it can be. Consider the daily grind of tasks that you could potentially automate. These tasks might include:
- In-depth data analysis
- Report generation and presentation
- Creative workflows and approvals
- Creative production tasks (e.g., cropping, reformatting, resizing, and editing en masse)
Automating these tasks can significantly boost efficiency. This will enhance accuracy. It will also allow you and your team more time to focus on innovation and strategic thinking, ensure consistent, high-quality customer interactions, and scale operations without scaling headaches.
This leads to a salient point. When implementing BPA, it’s key to focus on the benefit of the time saved—and what you can do with that time. There’s also the question of what you can do with the increased data you can glean.
For example, if you use BPA to automate aspects of customer data activation, you can use it to allow “set-and-forget” dynamic personalization. In turn, this can help you ensure each customer interaction is as relevant and engaging as possible without constantly reinventing the wheel.
However, to truly unlock BPA’s benefits, it’s key to realize that machines shouldn’t—and can’t—do everything.
BPA and Your Existing Team’s Talent: The Human Aspect of Automation
The most successful automation strategies recognize that technology’s role is to augment human expertise, not replace it.
When you mesh BPA with human creativity, there’s a sweet spot where automation frees up time for strategic thinking and innovation, allowing marketing teams to focus on crafting campaigns that resonate on a human level.
Wondering how to get there?
Preparing your workforce to effectively collaborate with automated processes should be your first focus. This lays the groundwork for a symbiotic relationship where technology handles the heavy lifting of data crunching and routine tasks, and humans apply insight, empathy, and creativity to make strategic decisions. This balance between leveraging automated solutions and retaining a human touch is key to delivering experiences that meet and exceed customer expectations.
Training Your Team to Implement Business Process Automation
To get to the benefits of BPA successfully, focus on building a culture of strategic, continuous learning.
Here’s an approach I recommend:
- Start by assessing your team’s current capabilities and your most frequently needed processes. Identify areas where BPA-related skills could be useful.
- Facilitate workshops and brainstorming sessions that bring together different departments. This cross-pollination of ideas can lead to innovative uses of BPA that align with your overarching business goals and customer experience strategies.
- Create training modules that cover the how-tos of the specific BPA tools you plan to use and the strategic thinking behind your automation aims.
- Regularly assess and adapt your approach! BPA is meant to be dynamic and evolve over time with regular updates to incorporate new technologies, insights, and feedback from your team.
Before we know it, BPA will be essential for companies prioritizing stellar CX. (It already is.) The time to explore, experiment, and invest in BPA is now.
But take your time: Employing a balanced, thoughtful, and educative approach to implementing BPA can help you benefit fully from the power of business process automation.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Darren Waddell , Executive Vice President, Innervate
Darren Waddell is an accomplished CX strategist who deeply understands the industry’s ever-evolving landscape. For 9+ years, Darren has served as the executive vice president of Innervate (formerly RevJet), the dynamic customer experience company. Darren combines his expertise in technology, data analytics, and consumer behavior to drive success for hospitality brands.