In conversation with CX Network Rajesh Rao, head of intelligent process automation at global telecommunications organization Nokia, shares the story of his CX career so far, highlighting the key lessons he has learned and offering expert advice on the application of intelligent automation.
Rao has enjoyed an extensive career, building a portfolio that includes management, leadership and board positions in most functional areas that directly or indirectly impact customers. The greatest lesson Rao’s career has taught him is that the aspects of experiences that ‘wow’ customers will always change.
“What ‘wows’ the customer today, very rapidly becomes standard experience hygiene, unexceptional and uninspiring,” he explains. “The search for excellence is a continuous process of finding and implementing the next thing that will ‘wow’ the customer.”
How to automate excellence into customer journeys?
In order to identify opportunities to automate excellence into customer journeys and remove points of friction, brands must understand what truly matters to customers. Rao believes that critical analyses of customer journey maps, which should be a cross-functional dialogue between all stakeholders, are crucial for attaining this understanding and identifying valuable automation opportunities.
Contemplating questions such as ‘is the required information easily available to the customer, in the language and style they expect?’ or ‘are exception paths of the customer journey covered?’ will help brands uncover solutions to the problems blocking customers from progressing to the next journey stages.
“Automation, combined with data analytics insights, can help identify a unique customer’s lifecycle stage and enable personalized, custom journeys, Rao remarks. “Once the right areas and problem statements are identified, there is a very large automation toolset that is available today to solve those”
Rao shares some examples of these toolsets and solutions from his own experience:
Opportunity area |
Automation solution |
Automation toolset items |
|
Personalization |
AI-based customer segmentation |
Specialized marketing algorithms |
|
Streamlining |
Chatbots to screen inquiries and route customers to the right department. Understanding context and launching actions that solve customer issues |
Conversational AI, middleware/orchestration and RPA |
|
Facilitation |
Smart electronic forms and built-in workflows |
Smart UI and workflows |
|
Being proactive |
Predictive analytics and customer feedback |
Data analytics |
|
Self-service |
Mobile applications and 360-degree view of customers |
Smart UI, RPA and middleware |
|
Quick response |
Automated categorization and routing of trouble tickets |
Out of box / organization's custom developed decision engines |
|
Transparency |
Social media integration, context and sentiment analysis based natural language auto responses |
Social media connectors and analytics |
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Does automation provide the convenience that customers demand?
“Crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, bring opportunities for brands to leap-frog the competition with convenience, Rao remarks. “Although, remembering that ‘wow’ factors are transient in nature, inevitably it will be near impossible to roll-back the conveniences offered during this crisis, and the customer expectation will shift to demand even more from brands.”
Rao reminds that process mining is a good way to uncover high-value opportunities to create added convenience for customers. These areas can be pinpointed by drilling down into customer journey maps to locate touchpoints where customers are investing time, cost or effort. A targeted effort to reduce the burden on customers in these areas can have a hugely positive impact on the customer’s perception of convenience, Rao notes.
Work to optimize these journey points should be prioritized by which areas have the highest impact on the customer’s perception of convenience. Accurate prioritization can be achieved by mining and analyzing customer surveys, verbatim comments and other Voice of the Customer data sources.
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