The Automation Trends to Include in your 2023 Agenda

Automation trends have many benefits

Right automation trends will not only increase the efficiency of your workforce, but can also help address the challenges of global labor shortages, improve the customer experience, and even save money for the right brands.  

Digital transformation has become a buzzword in every industry in recent years. As consumers become more demanding, regulations more complex, and workflows more detailed, businesses are increasingly turning to technology to increase efficiency and productivity.  

For companies planning their investment strategy for 2023, several revolutionary technologies are available, but few are as impactful as automation. Once considered a convenient option for minimizing repetitive tasks, automation has become an absolute requirement for many business leaders.  

The Evolution of Automation for 2023 

When the concept of automation was first introduced into the corporate and business landscape, it was met with great confusion. Many organizations viewed technology as an industry-specific requirement for specific sectors such as engineering and manufacturing. Others were worried about the potential impact of automation on the human workforce.  

 However, as more automation solutions have begun to emerge, we are discovering just how valuable technology can be. Today: 

• More than half of executives plan to increase their investments in automation in the coming years, and 73% expect significant revenue growth due to their new tools.  
• 73% of IT executives say their employees save between 10 and 50% of the time they would spend on manual tasks thanks to the implementation of automation capabilities.  
• 78% of business executives believe that automating tasks within the organization increases productivity and efficiency across the entire organization.  
• 85% of business executives believe that automating parts of their employees’ workflows allows them to focus on more strategic goals and accelerate business success.  

The Automation Trends to Watch in 2023 

Although all aspects of automation are experiencing significant growth in today’s enterprise landscape, there are some areas where we are seeing particularly strong interest. Here are some of the key automation trends to consider as you build your 2023 agenda. 

1. Customer Self Service Will Continue to Evolve  

According to Gartner, about 70% of customers currently use self-service channels to solve their issues. However, many companies are struggling to help customers complete the entire interaction without human assistance. Only 9% of service journeys are fully self-service. 

Customers are increasingly relying on automated tools to completely avoid conversations with the service agent or support provider. This means that tools must be able to provide intelligent, personalized, and guided support for even the most complicated challenges. In 2023, companies will begin to implement smarter forms of self-service for their target audiences. 

This will involve extending chatbot and virtual assistant capabilities with new AI innovations such as NLP, context, and intent analysis. More powerful conversational AI tools will be able to guide consumers through the self-service experience quickly and efficiently, reducing the number of calls the customer service team must handle. 

2. Automation will Empower Employees 

Today’s businesses must consider the benefits of this technology for both improving the customer experience and employee engagement. Concepts like “Total Experience” are becoming increasingly important for differentiating companies. Especially at a time when the “Great Resignation” has led to a massive shortage of skilled customer service employees cross-industries.  

Automation can help empower and support employees in many ways. First, self-service solutions reduce the number of calls employees deal with daily, freeing them up for other value-added tasks. Second, automated bots and solutions can guide employees through processes more quickly and conveniently.  

A virtual assistant for an agent can automatically leverage information about a customer in the contact center dashboard as soon as an agent answers a call, so they can immediately provide a personalized experience. The same tool can facilitate data searches about products and services and log call details at the end of a call. In this way, companies can significantly reduce the amount of work each employee has to do after a call. 

3. Intelligent Automation will Become the New Norm 

Automation has many faces in today’s technology landscape. Many traditional tools are designed to streamline simple processes using basic workflows and triggers. However, automation and artificial intelligence are becoming more interwoven, enabling a wider range of potential benefits. Intelligent automation combines concepts like machine learning and natural language processing with automation for a wide range of use cases.  

For example, an intelligent automation system could gather information about customers, determine which employees are best suited to handle which accounts, and automatically route calls based on that determination. These same tools could even be used to automatically resolve customer issues by setting processes in motion without human-employee involvement.  

Intelligent automation eliminates the need for employees to constantly monitor their automated workflows. It enables more end-to-end improvements in robotic process automation, workflow efficiency, and performance. 

4. Automated Solutions Will Allow for More Customization 

In the past, the concept of creating an automated solution for every business requirement from scratch would have been considered daunting, time-consuming, and expensive. This is especially true when we combine automation with artificial intelligence. Building intelligent workflows would have required deep programming and coding skills from industry experts.  

However, intelligent automation and customer service platforms are eliminating this complexity. No-code and low-code capabilities allow companies to turn different team members into “citizen developers” in their ecosystem and implement automation where they see fit. These customizable platforms enable rapid innovation and process automation without significant initial investment from modern brands.  

As low-code and no-code platforms become more prevalent, companies will have more freedom to create the exact workflows they need to improve the performance of their teams. More importantly, individual team members will play a greater role in deciding the future of automation strategy. 

5. Automated Solutions will Streamline Data Strategies 

One of the main benefits of automated solutions is that they enable companies to quickly complete time-consuming and complex tasks in the business environment. For example, an automated system can gather data from a variety of different environments faster and more accurately and consolidate it into an only source of truth than any human employee can.  

As businesses become more data-driven, the use of automated tools to capture information about processes, people and customers will become more common. In 2023, brands are likely to invest heavily in automated tools that enable them to capture data more accurately while adhering to their industry’s compliance policies and regulations.  

Automated tools will collect data from conversations with customers and ensure that employees from different areas of the business have access to the information they need to complete service and support tasks. Intelligent automation could even provide the team with deeper insights in the form of sentiment and intent analysis. 

6. Automation will Empower Proactivity 

As customer expectations evolve, customers now expect their companies to be able to provide solutions to their problems before they even occur. The pace of service is becoming more “proactive,” and Gartner believes that by 2025, proactive service solutions will surpass the reactive strategies used by most brands today.  

Unfortunately, delivering a proactive level of service is extremely difficult without the right technology. Companies cannot automatically predict what will happen with a product or service without access to the right insights and data. Automated tools that can collect and analyze information quickly can help with this change  

Automation allows organizations to proactively monitor various systems. Additionally, it ensures that alerts or notifications are routed to the right people when action is needed. Automated tools can even leverage historical data to provide team members with predictions that help them make decisions. 

Get Ready for the Next Wave of Automation 

Automation is one of the most valuable solutions for any business seeking digital transformation and increasing productivity across the enterprise. As automation solutions become more efficient and intelligent, they are likely to play a significant role in tomorrow’s technology strategies.  

Investing in some of the automation trends above could help your business stand out from the competition, unlock new opportunities, and save money on day-to-day processes. Contact Bulb Tech today to find out how we can help you get your automation agenda on track for 2023.