How Innovative Visual IVR And RPA Are Automating HR And Driving Efficiency

How Innovative Visual IVR And RPA Are Automating HR And Driving Efficiency

How Innovative Visual IVR And RPA Are Automating HR And Driving Efficiency

Visual IVR and Robotic Process Automation work in tandem to free up contact center agents to handle more value-added employee interactions

By YOSSI ABRAHAM

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY HR TECHNOLOGIST

Visual IVR and Robotic Process Automation are changing how employees interact with Human Resources, freeing up HR call center agents to focus on more value-added interactions. The powerful combination of technology is an efficient, direct method to automate many HR tasks, including:

  • Viewing holiday and leave of absence dates
  • Accessing and editing work schedules
  • Checking their payment status
  • Downloading their 2017 Form W-2
  • Watching informative training videos
  • Quickly and easily connecting with an IT helpdesk
  • Learning about company policies

Employees love effective self-service portals like RPA and Visual IVR. When amajor US retailerwith over 100,000 employees implemented a Visual IVR platform, 95% of users completed their interaction with the technology, referring only 5% of calls to a live contact center agent. Visual IVR automatically handled an equivalent of 4-5 agents worth of HR interactions.

“Visual IVR automatically handled an equivalent of 4-5 agents worth of HR interactions.”

How RPA Impacts HR

Efficiency is the defining characteristic of Robotic Process Automation (RPA). The bot-based technology uses data submitted by users to automatically change backend information — without any input from a live human. No matter how good a contact center agent is, an RPA bot is more efficient. RPA can handle more customers faster than an agent can, and can handle many times more customers at the same time. When bots are fulfilling the simple tasks that make up the majority of contact center operations, the calls that used to get sent to call centers are never transferred. With RPA implementation, Human Resources can shrink its contact centers and reduce costs. When Michael’s launched a Visual IVR utilizing RPA technology, theysaved $47,000in 3 months.

Automation makes interactions faster, and takes common tasks off the plates of HR employees. Michaels experienced a reduction in average handling time per call from over 6 minutes without automation to under 1 minute with Visual IVR and RPA.

Since RPA and self-service platforms take care of the simple tasks, the calls that do make it through to contact centers are always complex, high-value interactions. Without the burden of tedious interactions, live agents have the freedom to treat these complicated interactions with the attention they deserve. RPA allows enterprises to save money while improving the quality of every interaction that reaches their contact centers.

RPA And Visual IVR: The Perfect Combination

RPA can’t function efficiently on its own. For the bots to edit and submit new information they must first be told what to do. That’s where Visual IVR and self-service user interfaces come in. The Visual IVR and RPA combination creates an incredible ecosystem able to elegantly answer customer questions without the need for live agents. When customers submit forms via intuitive, visual solutions, Visual IVR captures that information and RPA processes it.

When a self-service user selects an option requesting data, RPA bots pull the required information directly from the relevant back-end systems using API connections.

An employee calling a Visual IVR-enabled HR contact center simply taps the manage account option and is instantly presented with the ability to activate direct deposit, view payment receipts, and any other tasks they may want to accomplish, visually on the smartphone they are calling through.

No live agent or clunky voice-based IVR menu. No need for unwanted native app downloads. All the answers they need. Now.

Employees are eager to utilize self-service technology like Visual IVR. According to a CFI Groupreport,55% of those surveyed say they are likely to use Visual IVR if given the option.

Tasks that would have taken multiple minutes of conversation with a live agent to complete are reduced to milliseconds thanks to customer-facing Visual IVR solutions triggering efficient RPA integration at contact centers.

The Revolution Won’t Be Televised — It’s On Your Smartphone

RPA is the engine driving the powerful self-service interactions that enhance the user journey and reduce costs for enterprises especially when implemented with Visual IVR. The relief RPA provides contact center agents frees up those agents to instead focus on the high-value and complex interactions that matter to customers.

Visual IVRwill revolutionize customer care by helping businesses lower costs while increasing their customer satisfaction. Easy to use touch screen menus make the Visual IVR experience efficient and effective. Mobile technology delivers impressive new tools for successful customer care. Together the potent combination decreases average handling time and costs while maintaining businesses’ most vital resource: happy employees.