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The second in Tanna Partners’ series of CX Thought Leaders’ Forums was held on March 30^th at The Stamford Plaza Hotel in Melbourne.  

The aim: to bring together like-minded, CX-centric, senior executives from a cross-section of end-user, vendor, SI and consulting environments to discuss and consider emerging CX themes, trends and issues in a collaborative conversation around the enormity of the challenge for the modern Enterprise: to do more with less whilst delivering world class CX.

It was quite clear that the big debate that has been raging not just in Australia but around the CX globe is one of people v’s robots – “FTE v’s AI” no less and our Chair quickly moved to ask for a definition of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to commence proceedings…

“A defined process without human error.”

“Then, when you introduce language it becomes cognitive.”

“Level 1 agent can be automated but a Team Leader requires thinking and decision-making.” 

“Robotics needs to be rules-based on the criteria.”

“A Process able to be replicated with no human intervention and without human error.”

The discussion then quickly turned to Artificial Intelligence as the end game with RPA as almost a means to an end:

“It’s about picking up the right elements to be automated – they have to be repeatable – all the rules-based stuff. It’s Macros on steroids then go straight to AI…”

It was noted that claims work within the Insurance industry, for instance, was already one of the biggest adopters of Robotics and then AI to prove that this was not just vendor hype but a living, working reality. Claims work was highly repeatable and was a logical target for any Robotics then AI implementation.
 

“Any insurance claim for an accident in a backyard pool could immediately draw upon the weather at that time, does the claim exist, does the policy exist, does the description sound possible, review social media to identify if the person was in the place they said they were plus many other factors all being pulled together quickly to give substance to prove or disprove the claim. Press a button and the claim is immediately recommended for approval or otherwise. It’s that quick!”
 
Proponents of robotics argued that it’s just common sense to introduce into the Enterprise:
 
“One benefit is that the human mind becomes jaded over time but Robotics and AI learn as they are used and actually get better.”
 
The Managing Director of a utility shared that they introduced RPA with a goal of automating processes so as to eliminate errors which therefore improved CX. An OPEX benefit was just icing on the cake but not the main goal as such. It was a case of designing errors out to stop people calling and that’s the significant prize.
 
“CX is different for each customer so is that a digital or a human intervention? Where is the interchange?”
 
It was mentioned that the standards are now blurred – you have one good call centre experience and you expect to get that across every contact centre and that puts the local contact centres at a huge disadvantage as they don’t have the technology and consistency of large multinational, voice-BPOs.

“Or you get to speak to a top performer – there are only a few top performers in an organisation so how do you deliver consistency?”
 
This directed the conversation back to AI which it was claimed is not programmed – it’s self-learnt in established environment motions and picks up intonations, contrasting the change between what is being said in the emotion and then makes a decision on a percentage if it believes information is correct or incorrect outside of context.
 
“The key is how we handle customer exceptions and anomalies – the left field, unable-to-be-predicted questions. How do we manage that?”
 
“Low-volume/high value customer interactions were still best serviced via human intervention and then automate the rest!”
 
A recent Robotics banking installation was cited with a significant 7 FTE per robot ROI ratio. And when it moved to AI, customers wouldn’t even know the difference. It was claimed that many customers of this bank did not recognise that they were speaking to a robot. Another AI installation within a New Zealand enterprise had a similar experience but noted that the challenge was to be clear on what you want to achieve as a lot of deployments are going to be very basic if you’ve thought through to the end goal.This is not rocket science
 
Aside from the People v’s Robots debate, it was noted that tackling the silos was critical to the delivery of world class CX. The metrics against which people are compensated and the goals they achieve are all linked.
 
“We are rewarding the wrong behaviours – individual rewards promote individual actions not team focused results and unless there is change to the rewards system perfect CX will be hard to achieve.”
 
A warning was delivered around AI by arguably the Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) expert in the room:
 
 “Be very careful with AI as this is still an immature market – look at RPA first, get your processes working, then create a Centre Of Excellence (COE) as this is a must and must be tied to the company goals. Map your processes and then identify/establish who measures this – RPA of itself will not deliver on the goals of the future as there is no value in sending a broken or isolated process off to RPA…”
 
It was then asked ‘How do we spend more effort to improve the broader CX and what indeed is good CX? The trend is to cut costs but this is not addressing the big issue of looking at the entire customer experience:
 
 “Customers are fickle. A Starbucks customer will go down the road to a competitor at the drop of a hat. In terms of customer segmentation, a single cell is not a solution. Customer segmentation is a concern and compromised when CX is 2nd to cost reduction. Customer segmentation of one is the necessary modern goal given the Enterprise and Consumer technologies now available.”
 
The Forum was then asked ‘To what degree is CX the concern of the C-suite?’
 
“The question is what is the cost + productivity solution -. It always comes down to cost whilst addressing the need to get smarter, faster.”
 
“With B2B, it’s big problem. The squeaky wheel gets the oil and then noisy customers get pushed in for a faster delivery and the good customers get pushed out even further…”
 
Perhaps the quote of the evening:
“If you torture data long enough, it will confess to anything!”
“It’s about getting the dirt out of the business. CX is the cost of doing business – if it doesn’t translate to the bottom line then you’re not doing it right!”
 
“It’s not about ROI – it’s about survival. Invest or you will go under. In the 90s ROI was estimated within three years but now with AI ROI is expected in 9 – 12 months. In some cases, it’s even expected within 9 weeks if everything is moving fast.”
 
AI allows for sentiment and emotion detection which lets you know what customers think without a survey and helps organisations to follow the smoke.  This brought into question the value (or at least the process) of NPS and its direction. The focus is now heading towards shareholder value as the primary measure.
 
“It’s less about the score and more about the systems to drive continuous improvement. NPS by comparison to AI doesn’t give me diagnostics and doesn’t detail what I need to do next.”
 
In terms of offshore BPO, this was affirmed as being very much in the firing line of Robotics and AI.
 
“Who measures processes undertaken offshore? Cheap labour costs often result in offshoring and forgetting. You must align with the future and offshore contact centres are the perfect target for Robotics. You must always put people first (customers and employees) and the process-driven interactions can be roboticised with more meaningful, complex interactions handled onshore.”

It was noted that a pharmaceutical company in the USA reinvested all the savings from RPA back into further improving the customer experience – that was the business case. That process segmented their customers focusing on ensuring delivery of outstanding service based on customer value.
 
It was suggested that the Centre of Excellence should be directly correlated with/tied into the Senior Executives’ goals/ KPIs. Furthermore, the benchmark for CX is being set across all industries. Customers in Energy may expect the same level of service they received from a completely different industry/organization, often in a completely different vertical.
 
The final quote:
 
“We need to “surf the rate of change until we fall off!”
 
 
Special thanks again to Peter Brannighan who returned to Chair the evening after having so expertly directed the alpha personalities from our first forum held in Sydney last year!  I also wish to personally thank all the CX Leaders who gave their time and expertise in making this event such a success.
 
The next CX Thought Leadership Forum will be held in Sydney scheduled for October 2017. Any thoughts, comments or opinions are most welcome and can be directed to Greg Tanna, MD, Tanna Partners @ gtanna@tanna.com.au