" For every chatbot answering questions online, there ought to be a familiar face available in person, or an attentive expert available on the phone. "
In a nutshell, automation is not just enabling organisations to either make money or save money. It is allowing them to enhance customer experiences, streamline laborious mechanisms and even boost employee satisfaction through the delegation of menial, transactional tasks to ever-willing, ever-working bots.
And that’s why we launched The Proservartner Automation Index, to provide a clear picture of the real impact that automation is having right now and its likely impact in the near term. Rather than add to the stockpile of studies looking at automation in twenty, thirty or fifty years, we wanted to understand the attitudes of today’s businesses towards automation.
Why FS is leading the charge
The financial services industry stands apart from other industries in its attitude to automation. It’s the only sector to take part in the study and boast an automation uptake level of 100%. Not one industry chief has refrained from incorporating robotic automation or AI in to some sort of business process in the last six months.
Now, spotting the benefits to automation is not a talent exclusively in the hands of financial services bosses. In fact, more than four in five industry leaders across various different sectors believe that automation will drive cost efficiency in their firms.
But, financial services leaders appear to have devised a formidable strategy that combines the use of robotics process automation and artificial intelligence to boost global revenues and enhance customer satisfaction - and are already reaping rewards.
Behind closed doors, the industry is harnessing the cost-cutting capability of robotic HR and Finance processes, such as automated payroll, record keeping and data capture. Productivity is boosted and costs are slashed. And at front-of-house, customers are enamoured with a tech-savvy approach to communications. Innovative chatbot software is readily available on social media. Online, instant messaging means talking to a human advisor takes no more than a few clicks. And dedicated applications, meticulously well designed, make previously daunting tasks simple.
A closer look at lending
But are these digital tricks repeatable in the infamously trickier mortgage lending industry, where the customer journey is long and windy and frequently involves liaison with a range of intermediaries?
In a word, yes. Lenders, in keeping with their industry colleagues, are wholeheartedly embracing automation. The laborious back and forth of exchanging paperwork between lender, intermediary and customer can be replaced by the instantaneous, and secure, sharing of data. Advanced machine learning promises to dramatically speed up the underwriting process. Even, full-fledged mortgage applications can be determined by artificial intelligence, with nothing more than a final sign-off required by the traditional workforce.
Exciting indeed. But the nature of the game here is not to replace conventional, interpersonal exchanges all together. The key is to offer choice. For every chatbot answering questions online, there ought to be a familiar face available in person, or an attentive expert available on the phone. Customers in this sector will always need human reassurance.
And this is why the concerns over automation might be misplaced. The human workforce is not set to be replaced. Instead, the combination of technology and tradition could hold the key to the best customer service. The provision of agility, together with the retention of human trustworthiness is likely to be a compelling strategy for many.
So, let’s take a moment to consider the financial services industry as a whole. It is an industry that finds itself on the automation frontier. Its leaders are driving the sector forward through unprecedented automation adoption. Internally, firms are quicker and leaner. Externally, they are dexterously juggling rapid robotic and human customer services. The industry is a leading light, and others are following it.
