The road to automation isn’t an ‘all-or-nothing’ journey – and you don’t need to wait for AI to mature to automate key processes end to end.
Rather, each process can be orchestrated and automated with the correct platform, and AI can help you optimise within the individual steps, reducing risk and disruption – enabling rapid, repeatable automation without AI.
There is no doubt that artificial intelligence is going to transform the telco industry. The ability of AI grows constantly and quickly, but it’s not sophisticated enough, reliable enough or trustworthy enough to let loose inside your network. Rightly so, operators are cautiously optimistic, but this doesn’t mean you must wait for AI to catch up. You can do the necessary groundwork today.
That’s because AI is not a prerequisite when it comes to automation. Automation and orchestration are already providing huge benefits, in terms of efficiency, reduced costs, risk mitigation, cyber compliance and much more, by simply removing the low value and mundane human centric operations in telco today. In time, AI will be ready and at that time, the combination of the two technologies will provide a powerful tool for harnessing the opportunities offered by 5G.
AI – Don’t be too early or too late
Recent examples of rogue AI chatbots (at UK delivery firm DPD, for example) have alerted many to the fact that it may be too early to embrace the emerging technology. AI is in its infancy, when it comes to telco deployments, and caution is required when considering going ‘all in’ – particularly when it comes to automation. Conversely, there is a danger of holding off too long on setting out on the Automation/AI journey and falling behind competitors.
Automation itself, however, is providing significant transformational benefits today – across many operational processes. At the same time, it can provide an open platform for to leverage AI in the future.
It’s not a case of needing to adopt AI (or Automation) across the board, which brings its own risks. Rather, an incremental approach to automation offers a pragmatic, and future-proof, approach to starting the AI/Automation journey.
Take the automation of Customer Experience as an example. The customer experience journey takes in multiple, distinct processes that combine to create the whole – each of which can be automated individually – and linked to create a seamless experience journey.
The Customer Experience Automation journey
For example, customer experience embraces Order Capture, which today needs to be multi- and omni-channel. Order Capture, of course then requires a knowledge of stock levels, the nature of the shipping and delivery required, and an ability to process returns and recycling at the end of the lifecycle. Even if each step is automated step-by-step or individually – rather than across an entire process – automation still offers significant efficiency gains, that quickly add up.
Similarly, contact centres are a huge component of the customer experience. Besides taking orders, it also involves tasks such as dealing with any faults or issues with delivery or registration, Billing, chatbots for any quick or minor customer queries, IVR, and of course the agents themselves who need to access to customer details and history. As we know, one of the biggest customer ‘bugbears’ is a lack of information held on them, or having to repeat the same story to different departments or on different days.
Again, each step can be automated on an incremental basis. It may seem obvious, but IVRs and auto-attendants were a huge early step towards automation, but there’s much more that can be done. Chatbots, for example, can be enabled – but despite all the focus on new, AI-enabled versions, AI isn’t necessary to deliver chatbots to aid self-service.
Sure, it can offer benefits, but you can still automate associated tasks and routines without waiting for AI to mature at all levels. The automation starts with the first step, which can then be built on as and when ready or required.
A step-by-step pragmatic approach to Automation/AI
Likewise, the broader process of Sales Ledger management incorporates Credit Control, Accounts receivable, Collections, and so on. Diagnostics-as-a-Service (DAAS), Service validation, and Service testing also represent smaller parts of the much broader Customer Experience, all of which can be automated individually as steps in the DAAS process. Alternatively, if a telco is ready and prepared to automate the entire DAAS process this is also an option.
Incident Management is another essential part of optimising the customer experience. This might include Ticket automation, ID verification, Raising an issue, Diagnosis of the problem, and of course fixing the customer issue or complaint. Again, each step can be automated in a pragmatic, controlled manner, depending on where you are in the automation journey.
The message is clear. The Automation/AI journey doesn’t need to be an ‘all-or-nothing’ task. To reduce risk and disruption, it can be far more pragmatic to consider each step or process on the larger journey, and then each component of each process can be automated and then integrated (with AI) over time until the individual parts become greater than the whole.
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