Why aren’t Executives Turning to Automation?
Implementing automation is kind of like consuming vegetables, it might feel unpleasant in the beginning but will provide astonishing benefits to your company in the long run.
However, there’s no doubt that automation can be disruptive. Workers need to learn how to work with machines. For some people, it can be like learning new software. While others might take some time to get used to it.
But such discomforts have their own payoffs. A robotic process automation firm conducted a survey and found some astonishing results. That study revealed that automation benefited customer satisfaction by 92%, showed an increase of 91% in employee capacity, a 90% increase in inefficient marketing and an 88% increase in customer engagement.
With all these benefits, there are still some businessmen who are holding out. If you ever ask them why it’s very likely that they’ll mention one of the reasons mentioned below.
They don’t want to lose the human touch
Business personnel who are not familiar with automation usually see it as an either-or proposition. Either they keep human workers behind the wheel or they could hand the company over to the machines.
A lot of automation is programmed to let workers drop mind-numbing tasks and offer more abilities to deal with tasks. Many tools are designed to automate surface tasks like customer service and sales. Through this, it is ensured that nothing falls through the cracks, and workers can have consistent communication without compromising personalization.
Depending on the usage of the automation tool declares whether our work is reduced or reinforced. Of course, a sale tool can send messages that may sound generic. Even though it can reach out to more prospects frequently in comparison to a salesperson who might connect with a prospect once a quarter.
Their customer relation will suffer
Another thing that you will hear from businessmen regarding the replacement of employees with automation is the concern that it would hurt their customer relationship. But in several scenarios, the client can work out with bots as well.
Let’s take the example of calling customer service. A customer feedback platform conducted a study and found that people prefer talking to bots over a human if it saves them time. One in five interviewees responded said that they would tend to interact with a person on the other side.
Some can’t afford automation
Certainly, automation is expensive. Training a whole office according to the workflow of chatbots or developing an algorithm based on loan approval can cost thousands of dollars. Though there are dozens of automated applications that are free of cost.
You can always find a paid product if you are looking for one rather than a customized one. But free automated tools offer more functionality that we can think of.
Teams aren’t trained for automation
Leaders who are bringing up such objections are thinking about the long run. They are aware that even if somehow they migrate to automation they will still have to train their workforce to handle it and also they will have to invest in training as well. You can never expect an employee to work with tools they aren’t aware of.
It is possible that your managing team is not aware of the new technology. In such cases, you can bring in a consultant. There are groups that provide online and on-site training in areas like ticket processing and customer service. Such consults encourage automation at a very high level.
Stuck on “Good enough”
It has been widely said that if the company’s staff and customers are satisfied, they don’t even think about making amendments.
Assume that you have a 90s PC with an ancient OS that is taking 20 minutes to connect with the internet and another 20 minutes to load this article. So, why would you not think about upgrading it? Even a low-end smart of this era could load it up in seconds.
According to a consultancy firm named KPMG, computerization can save companies up to 70% give or take, depending on the task and tool used for automation. They also said “Good enough” is the best way to waste your money and resources plus losing the competitive edge.
Don’t want their productivity to be compromised
A lot of companies out there aren’t scared of automation, thus they say they don’t want their products to be compromised. What they don't do is that there are automation tools like staff timer tracker. Such tools are able to track their employee’s time spent working in addition to their productivity with the help AI-based algorithm that calculates progress based on keystrokes and mouse activity and idle time.
Such automation can increase the employee’s productivity rather than decreasing it.
Conclusion
In the end, automation is not a cure for all processes, not it is a reason to put less effort into customer relations. It is just like eating broccoli, with just a little legwork upfront, it can affect your company’s health enormously.