Editorial
The Gist
- Balance efficiency and empathy. Balancing automation with human interaction enhances both customer and employee satisfaction, fostering brand loyalty.
- Augment, don't replace. Automation should augment employee roles, not replace them, ensuring valuable human insights remain part of customer service.
- Automation boosts CLV. Properly implemented automation can significantly increase customer lifetime value by improving service efficiency and satisfaction.
In rising to meet customer demands for faster times to solutions and stand out from competitors with more personalized offerings, brands are always aiming to innovate to increase efficiency, cut costs and enhance customer satisfaction. Digital transformation efforts, including recent AI initiatives for automating customer service and the employee experience, have often focused on boosting productivity or reducing expenses like headcount, using technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to do so.
The Customer Satisfaction Connection to Automation
However, a key issue arises from not connecting the dots between automation and employee tasks and its ultimate impact on customer satisfaction. This becomes even more critical with the growing popularity (and near-ubiquity) of even the most traditional product companies adopting services and subscription models designed for retaining customers and improving customer lifetime value (CLV).
Accounting for Long-Term Customer Value
While automating customer service certainly helps organizations save money by making operations more efficient, overlooking the link between streamlining tasks and improving customer satisfaction presents a challenge. Without this connection, the long-term viability of internal efficiency improvements and automation of employee tasks may not prove sufficient, as long-term customer value needs to be accounted for.
This article will explore the relationship between automating customer service and the employee experience and its impact on customer satisfaction and the overall customer experience, drawing on some recent academic research.
Related Article: The Wrong Way to Do CX Automation
Automation Can Be the Best of Both Worlds for Companies and Customers
With a lot of focus on increased adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) centered on cost savings and efficiency gains or more operational metrics, an additional and very important benefit is that end customers are also responding well to increased automation. For instance, a poll by Zendesk showed that 67% of customers polled said that they preferred self-service customer service options over speaking with someone. This doesn’t undermine the importance of human agents in this case, but rather points to the fact that many customer service challenges don’t require human support and can go more smoothly when automated.
The Advantages of RPA
Robotic Process Automation, which unlike generative AI, is a form of AI that has been widely adopted for decades, can often excel in mimicking repetitive human tasks, thereby freeing employees to focus on more strategic and customer-centric activities. RPA bots can interact with various systems (e.g., ERP, CRM) without human intervention, leading to improved productivity and employee satisfaction, because those employees are focused on more valuable tasks than something a customer could more easily look up on an online knowledge base.
Research suggests that RPA not only streamlines processes, but can also significantly enhance the customer experience by ensuring faster and more accurate service delivery. Automating mundane tasks allows employees to dedicate more time to understanding and meeting customer needs, thereby directly contributing to increased customer satisfaction.
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Any Customer Can Benefit From Automation and Self-Service
The transition from human-staffed to automated electronic service offerings represents a significant shift in how services are delivered. One study found that user satisfaction with automated services increases with the length of service usage prior to automation — meaning that longstanding customers tend to greatly appreciate when brands they support make meaningful improvements to automate their product and service offerings.
Integrating New Features
McKinsey also recently reported that, while reduction of costs in the core business was a key driver of AI adoption, an even larger component was to increase the value of their core offerings by integrating new features, such as greater automation or self-service.
Related Article: The Future of Customer Interactions: Harnessing RPA and IPA
Don’t Replace Employees — Augment Them
While McKinsey states that fewer than 5% of employee roles will likely be fully automated (i.e., replaced), the operative word is "augmentation" not "replacement." A great, automated customer service experience can have a positive indirect impact on brand equity through customer satisfaction and loyalty. Despite this, the human element — particularly empathy — remains crucial in shaping customer perceptions and experiences.
Leaving the Repetitive Tasks Behind
After all, there are many cases where full automation of a process is not desired by customers, and many more still where employees play a valuable role in providing insights and strategies to help improve the customer experience. Because of this, the nearly 40% of a workers’ day that can be automated can be replaced with more thoughtful activities and fully harness the capabilities of what human teams can do, while leaving the highly repetitive tasks to RPA and other processes.
Balance Is Key
Leaders in this approach will adopt methods to measure and find the right balance here, and stay one step ahead to ensure that too much automation doesn’t decrease costs at the expense of unhappy customers, and they will also discover the best balance to not reduce employee engagement either.
Final Thoughts on Automating Customer Service and the Employee Experience
By providing greater automation for employees as well as self-service options for customers, organizations can enhance productivity, reduce manual errors and allow employees to focus on value-added activities, thereby improving the customer experience and increasing CLV.
The best approach is to find the right balance between the human touch where needed and automation and self-service where customers value and appreciate it. Moderation in both manual and automated approaches is the key.
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