Forester recently published their Future of Work report for 2019. Foresters’ research paints a vision of exciting times ahead for us with new job types, more interesting and human work and enabling more flexible working models.
Of particular interest is call centre automation that includes augmentation of bots, robotic process automation (RPA), predictive analytics and delivering artificial intelligence (AI) that will allow our agents to become super-agents delivering rapid, accurate and effortless services. This will lead to us recruiting differently and ultimately new management methods and styles to support the augmented workforce.
In Australia we are already seeing the first of these solutions coming to market. Customer Science recently helped an outsourcer and Government agency with a 60x spike following a policy change. Introducing telephony automation, intelligent call back and unified desktop robot assistance (RPA), they were able to handle the volumes delivering >30% efficiencies and significantly higher accuracy. There was no bad press, and all customers gained the service requested.
Anglicare has used robots (RPA) to deliver services that were just too cost-prohibitive. The proactive service helps ensure staff can be on time to at-home care visits and if not take action to avoid unnecessary customer concern and workload to the call centres. These changes needed strong change programs, different training, metrics for success and jobs to bring together a single contact centre solution. Australia is still very early in its CX Technology lifecycle with a future that is bright.
We are already seeing a digital workforce now considered as a realistic option to offshoring work. With the augmented digital and super-agent workforce, costs are comparable to offshoring. Local staff, with cultural knowledge and in-country experiences, can deliver more efficient and greater customer experience.
If this future excites you too and you would like to explore how it could make a difference in your organisation, please connect.