How Automation Can Free the Creative Genius

Thomas Edison is credited with the phrase: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." This view may have been true in Edison's time before his inventions came to fruition and simplified everyday life for millions. Today, however, with advanced technologies that can automate everything from banking to retail to customer service, many laborious and menial tasks stealing our time have been completely eliminated.

With far less perspiration required to meet our basic needs, we have more time than ever to bring new ideas and innovation to life, enhance customer experience and improve business ROI.

Remove Barriers to Creativity

Humans are great at pattern recognition and formulating strategies, but they don't particularly excel after staring at data for hours. Automation can categorize data, detect anomalies and extract insights, giving people a "head start" on creative brainstorming. With artificial intelligence (AI) responsible for the heavy legwork, people don't have to exhaust their intellect on monotonous tasks. Instead, they can apply their cognitive potential to handle high-level business issues and refine existing systems.

Automation can also help reduce unnecessary and legacy business processes. For example, HR leaders spend a lot of time — in one estimate, up to 40% of their time — on administrative tasks, answering phone calls, writing emails and transferring data from one system to another. However, some innovative companies use machine learning automation to streamline talent acquisition and employee recruitment. Automating tedious onboarding processes can help HR personnel to wisely spend their time and creative abilities, such as thoroughly evaluating candidates to ensure no qualified individual gets overlooked.

When people are less preoccupied with crunching numbers and replying to emails, their creativity will have more of a chance to shine — but, more importantly, they'll be more satisfied in their careers. Menial tasks can sap people of their energy and motivation — however, projects that let us exercise our cognitive potential are more rewarding, ultimately leading to better results.

Make the Consumer's Life Better

Customer experience (CX) is critical to differentiating from competitors and creating loyal clients. Today, consumers want to save time — the modern customer would often prefer not to wait for a representative to check with a manager or look up something in their system. If customers can discover the answer to their questions without speaking with an agent, they will be all the more pleased.

Automation solutions are effective means of making the consumer's life better as they can, when integrated with a contact center, provide self-service features such as chatbots and virtual assistants. These AI-powered automated communication solutions boost CX and reduce consumer stress by eliminating hold times and allowing callers to get answers to questions rapidly while quickly resolving simple requests like paying bills or password changes.

Brands can also use automation to better coordinate messaging between different channels — voice, email, SMS, and social — and create a smooth and consistent experience for the consumer. Likewise, liberating customer support from monotonous requests will enable them to use their creativity elsewhere. Notably, they will be free to fix pain points, removing friction in the customer journey. Staff will also have time to learn and implement new technologies, further enriching CX.

Improve Business ROI

Automation won't replace humans, but it will augment their efforts. By removing time-consuming and tedious tasks, individuals, teams, and company leaders can direct their energy and effort to higher ROI areas and prioritize challenges that require human intellect.

In just one month, a FinServe company leveraging automation to launch a new customer project was able to process 1.5 million new account activation requests. Similarly, automation will quickly pay for itself and other initiatives. For instance, by offloading inbound inquiries to automation and self-service, contact centers could handle twice the call volume — meaning, a company of 100 agents could see $2 million in annual savings.

Businesses can further improve revenue by automating appointment and event reminders. A study found that missed healthcare-related appointments in the US cost the industry an absurd $150 billion annually. The benefits of automating these reminders are twofold; it will improve the likelihood that customers will attend or reschedule on time, increasing revenue; it will also help call center agents pivot their attention to more pressing issues.

Additionally, automation will reduce human error, which is common when people perform highly repetitive tasks. These mistakes are also the result of poor collaboration. One study found that US companies lose $1.2 trillion yearly due to ineffective communication. However, automating internal communication channels helps team members share information, maintain compliance and work more cohesively.

Key Features to Look for When Implementing Automation

Understandably, employees might be hesitant and even antagonistic toward automation efforts. Be sure to implement gradual shifts to promote adoption. Also, businesses must explain why certain processes are getting automated in the first place and train staff accordingly.

Likewise, businesses can achieve greater buy-in by bringing employees into the company's automation transition. Articulate that the company is not automating the employees but giving them the tools to automate their own work. Ultimately, automation can help make their roles more rewarding, improving personal and professional satisfaction.

When deciding which processes will lead to the greatest innovation and creativity once automated, companies should look to eliminate those duties that are repetitive and simple. Again, utilize a crawl, walk, run approach over an impromptu overhaul. In the same way, you should leverage platforms that allow for incremental, iterative change that empowers individual creativity to flourish.

Moreover, the software or service enabling automation capabilities should be easy to use; some leading platforms come with intuitive builders equipped with no-code and low-code applications. Investing in such software will allow anyone to create, edit or add automation to workflows — no coding experience required. Additionally, the ideal software should integrate with other platforms and enhance your existing infrastructure.

Edison is famous for having 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. While his perseverance is commendable, most businesses don't have 1,000 chances to get automation right, so set your priorities before comparing options.