Give Your Automation and AI Some People Power

How to Get Your Teams Working Together and Feeling Better

In a previous blog Sabio discussed the importance of taking smaller steps and putting process before technology.

But there is a bigger picture here – even if you get the process aspect right, it won’t necessarily count for much unless you can implement this on a company-wide scale. Whether that technological change can flow effectively across your business all rests on you creating the cultural shift needed for it to happen.

In short, you need to smash silos and build bridges.

Create Company-Wide Cultural Change

The mistake many businesses make is believing that automation and AI all hinges upon technology. If only.

You can’t simply deploy a program and expect a solution without a cultural paradigm shift, because that is what will ultimately be the vehicle for the technological shift. The companies that effect this change will be more likely to succeed in the long run.

Because of this need for company-wide collaboration, it’s vital to get everyone on board. Buy-in needs to be collective because it’s a lot harder to get things done if all your people aren’t supportive of the change.

Some businesses have struggled after they found that getting buy-in from middle management proved a lot harder than buy-in from the C-Suite.

So what exactly will it look like when everything clicks into place across your company? It’ll be a more harmonious balance between automated interactions and human actions, together with a smoother, more effortless experience for your customers.

Smash Those Silos

AI-powered automation projects led by a small siloed team usually don’t go well. Teams isolated in silos often don’t understand how their actions affect other departments.

A common example of this that we see today is in the digital team “owning” this new technology, adding new AI-driven proactive contact options online without consulting the contact centre operations, and the staff on the frontline are suddenly swamped and left managing this increased demand, unaware of where it came from.

AI-powered automation demands collaboration because companies function better when teams become mindful of the knock-on effect of their actions.

Companies need to improve the internal communication between their departments, so they can identify and bridge gaps in each department’s understanding, and then bring the whole company together to be working on a shared goal as one.

Look After the Wellbeing of Your Human Beings

The potential benefits of automation and AI are tremendous, but if not applied in a careful way, automation programmes can be highly disruptive.

Any new technology you deploy will affect your people, so it can only work if it’s compatible with them. It’s vital, therefore, that you’re aware of how automation impacts staff wellbeing and have a plan to provide them with support.

You need to know right away if your agents are becoming overworked. Through successful automation, they won’t be dealing any more with the simple transactional contacts, instead they’ll be supporting your customers with longer, more mentally demanding interactions.

We know that giving agents these non-stop complex and difficult conversations can take its psychological and emotional toll on them.

Thankfully, the applications of automation and AI reach inwards to your people and contact centre, so the same powerful technology that delivers solutions for your customers can be applied to support your agents.

About Sabio

Sabio Group is a global digital customer experience (CX) transformation specialist with major operations in the UK (England and Scotland), Spain, France, Netherlands, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and India. Through its own technology, and that of world-class technology leaders such as Amazon Connect, Avaya, Genesys, Google Cloud, Salesforce, Twilio and Verint, Sabio helps organisations optimise their customer journeys by making better decisions across their multiple contact channels.

Read other posts by Sabio

Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.