3 Ways Robotic Process Automation Can Help Deliver a 5-Star Customer Experience

RPA is not a physical robot, nor a piece of hardware. RPA robots, or “bots,” are software robots that run on a physical machine or in the cloud. Anyone can define a set of instructions for the bot to perform, and RPA bots can mimic most human-computer interactions to speedily execute a high volume of varied tasks.

Automation of tasks and information delivery is a vital component of the superior customer experience, and satisfaction can be improved by:

• Integrating claims processing information to speed up processing and payment.
• Automating policy administration and servicing.
• Providing speedy, accurate, and customized quotes.
• Collecting data.

RPA also can provide 24/7 customer service via chatbots without human intervention. By automating what were once labor-intensive, repetitive tasks, customer satisfaction increases because agents now have time to nurture relationships and do other work that adds value to your growing organization.

Capabilities are one thing, but how does making RPA part of your digital experience strategy improve the customer experience day-to-day?

The digital labor that RPA performs offers time, cost, and quality benefits for your employees as well as your clients. Customer service is by its very nature people-centric, and providing a better experience for your staff will provide a better experience for your customers.

The quality of the customer service you provide has a direct impact on loyalty, acquisition, and retention. It is essential to optimize the use of every communication channel to transform the customer experience. This means offering an integrated and consistent experience across all mediums, including email, your call center, and your web portal.

Your customer communication improvements should aim for efficiency. With RPA, customer email communications can be automated, so no one has to remember renewal dates and other important events. Marketing campaigns, too, can go out on a regular schedule, as can SMS messages.

Your AI-powered chatbots can pull information from even siloed databases to provide answers to common questions and faster responses. A survey discovered that 89% of people say a quick response to an initial contact is a big factor when they are deciding which company to purchase from.

By analyzing data and leveraging the power of AI, you can hyper-personalize the customer experience to be human-centric with minimal intervention from your human staff. This means your customers never get a “canned” email or text response that doesn’t really answer their query.

In addition, when chatbots aren’t enough and customers call in, RPA can route calls to the appropriate team. If the call is then transferred to someone else, RPA can provide all the customer information to the new agent, so the customer doesn’t have to repeat themselves every time they talk to a different representative.

Claims processing is an important part of the customer experience and can have an oversized impact on your relationship. A sad statistic is that, in the P&C sector alone, 41% of customers surveyed who were satisfied with the way their claim was handled still said they are likely to switch to another insurer.

That doesn’t seem to make sense. They are satisfied, they say. However, the end-to-end customer experience was lacking. In the eyes of the customer, manual claim processing seems to take forever. Speedy settlement and transparent processes are extremely important when building customer loyalty – 94% of survey respondents said these are both key expectations.

With RPA development, speedy and efficient claims processing becomes a reality. RPA takes old, clunky legacy applications, extracts the needed data, and streamlines the entire claims process, moving large amounts of data with only one mouse click.

Chatbots provide your customers with some self-service due to their ability to search your databases to answer common questions. But customers increasingly prefer to do as much as they can themselves with self-service web portals instead of having to deal with a human being.

Insurance customers aren’t comfortable using self-service for everything, but most would like to be able to do research and submit personal data for personalized information. Insurance industry leaders would be wise to employ RPA to provide exhaustive information, ways for customers to handle non-critical issues, and manage their accounts.

While self-service doesn’t suit every customer inquiry or task, some features are well-suited to self-service access, including:

A detailed, consistent, and easy-to-search knowledge base: Build a repository of relevant information, such as policy comparisons, claims application guides, and even a glossary of terms.

Claims management: We’ve pointed out the importance of fast claims processing, but customers always want a way to simplify their part of this cumbersome journey. RPA facilitates fillable forms that are submitted online. Your solution should let your customer make the first notice of loss, fill out and submit an official claim form, and electronically submit photo or video evidence. It should also provide complete visibility into their claim status, so they don’t have to reach out to sales or customer service.

Chatbots: The ability to get answers to a question here and there is one thing, but you can strategically use chatbots to enhance your self-service portal by programming them to analyze the customers’ profile information and engagement history. This allows the chatbot to supply personalized recommendations for products or services. These chatbots also can be used to compare plans, describe them, match policies to your customer’s criteria, and help address simple concerns.

Chatbots can only perform actions that are defined by algorithms, so they aren’t meant to handle complex issues and requests. When using them, make sure they are programmed to escalate to human agents if necessary. Chatbots also haven’t reached the level of technical maturity to accurately gauge emotions, so the sentiment they express may not be entirely appropriate. This can lead to escalation of an already tense situation.

For insurance industry leaders, robotic process automation is a vital tool in the competitive world of customer experience. It’s time to review your digital experience strategy and reap the financial benefits emerging technologies bring when you offer a five-star customer journey.

RPA provides a great solution to optimize and enhance the customer experience. But it also offers a huge reduction in duplicate effort, elimination of redundant manual processes and technical process debt, better decision making, and higher employee and customer retention.

RD Global’s custom intelligent automation solutions leverage state-of-the-art technologies, including enterprise-level robotic process automation, AI, and event-driven software, without disturbing existing applications.​​ Schedule a discovery call to learn how RD Global can partner with you to bring in and retain the customers on whom your growth depends.