31 Jan, 2021 | Blogs
The front office is an integral part of any company. It comprises several customer-facing roles, including customer service, sales, and field marketing. All these roles are directly involved in increasing the demand, revenue, marketing, and after-sales services of the business. In some industries, like healthcare, the front office, include a reception desk to welcome visitors and patients, registration services, and security staff. Similarly, in hospitality, the front office is the converging point for all other departments such as banquet, housekeeping, human resources, marketing, security, controller, etc. In other words, regardless of the industry, the front office is essential to the profitable functioning of a business and relies heavily on the back office for providing an unparalleled customer experience.
The Need for Front-office Automation
According to a report by Gartner, the use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for front-office functions will grow 30% by 2023. Front-office automation will not only drive higher customer satisfaction but will also transform the way companies and their customers interact.
Here is a quick run-down of the various types of front-office functions that can be automated:
- Gathering customer data
- Updating customer queries or complaints
- Registration
- Security checks that hugely involve the front-office staff
Even though speed and accuracy are necessary for all these and other functions, they are still done manually by the staff. This type of mind-numbing work can results in costly errors and turnovers. Front office automation holds the key to motivate staff, reduce errors and transaction time, increase response times, and offer a better customer experience. Other obvious benefits of automation are improved average call handle time, increased efficiency, higher customer satisfaction scores, and better collaboration and communication in the entire value chain.
The writing is on the wall: front-office automation is a growing necessity to enhance the customer’s experience with the brand.
Top Three Use Cases of Front-office Automation
Unmatched Customer service
In today’s competitive world, exceptional customer service is the sole differentiator between the haves and the have nots. To sustain competitiveness, delivering seamless client services across multiple online and offline channels is not nice to have but an imperative. That’s because customers want instant responses and solutions in the digitally connected world they live in.
Automation helps companies provide instant gratification to their customers and deliver higher customer satisfaction levels. It augments the human-client interaction by automating manual work like data entry, validation, and extraction, eventually shortening the response time, and helping staff be consistent across all channels. Other obvious advantages of automation include better productivity, lower operation costs, reduced human errors, and faster query resolution.
Better Customer Communication
Automation can help front office staff communicate with clients promptly. With workflow automation, the team can send automated alerts, important updates, notifications, and personalized responses based on the client’s response. It helps companies keep their clients up to date with the latest product or service offerings, exciting offers, and new deals. Such a level of communication fosters better client relationships and understanding of their wants, needs, and expectations. With such vital information readily available, companies can better position their products and create more collaboration opportunities with their customers.
Read the Top 9 RPA Trends in 2021
Sales Order Process
The sales order process is not straightforward. It usually involves several stakeholders, departments like finance, logistics, customer service, and applications like customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms. In most companies, processing sales orders is a manual task, resulting in a loss of time that leads to delay in deliveries and lower profits. In some extreme cases, it can even strain customer relationships.
An automated process of sales orders allows sales and marketing teams to adapt to the fast-paced business. Automation helps accurately capture data, streamline tasks and deliver information faster. This, in return, increases time to revenue and improves workflow efficiency.
Where to Start?
Let Nuummite Consulting help you start your automation journey. We are a leading digital transformation implementation company in the Middle East, with experiences in various industries such as healthcare, banking, and financial services, retail, media, and supply chain. Get in touch with our experts and start your automation journey today.