5 Steps to Improve Employee Productivity & Customer Engagement

Most companies face staffing issues and there are only so many productive hours in a day to complete daily tasks and engage customers. In the past, business growth meant hiring more people but that's not always an affordable option with unemployment hovering around 4% and new jobs being added to the economy each month - even amidst inflation and risk of recession.

Employee capacity is the one variable leaders can control to generate both ROI, business resiliency, and customer engagement very quickly. Leaders who prioritize eliminating low-value work for employees are also able to prioritize customer retention. Win + Win

AI and Digital Workers (bots) are no longer only available to large companies and tech companies with the engineering expertise to implement them. Now it's just a matter of strategy, time, and knowledge.

Example: Overhead is the Enemy.

Client ROI has always been a priority in my strategy. I've been automating processes for more than 20 years so I made a conscious decision to automate as much of my back office as possible. Nearly all of my bookkeeping has been automated with combinations of accounting software and digital worker workflow bots such as Microsoft Power Automate. Next we focused on making CSG the firm of choice for our independent contractor network as they manage their time, do their billing, and manage projects so they can focus more of their time on delivering great client service. Here's how we did it...

5 Steps to Increase Employee Productivity & Customer Engagement... No Developers Required

Prioritize Customer Outcomes

Every company is in business to deliver value to their customers. The first step is to divide work our teams do into 3 categories: 1) Activities that drive value for customers 2) Activities that employees enjoy. 3) Low value. That's it. There are things we do every day to make sure our customers are engaged and happy. There are things we do every day to make sure our employees have what they need to take care of our customers. Everything else is necessary evil.

Ditch the Low Value

As you focus the organization on driving value for your customers, your team can easily give you examples of repetitive tasks that stand in their way. They may already be using tools like ChatGPT to save time make their jobs a bit easier. As long as they're smart about what tools can be used for and don't rely on them for important decisions, it's smart to embrace them. These are also the employees that are more likely to be able to learn and embrace digital workers. Even if they aren't comfortable writing code or integrating systems, they've cleared the first hurdle of automation: embracing change.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and AI tools are now easily and affordably accessible. In fact, chances are that at least a couple of the software tools you already use have some form of RPA built into them. No need to go out and buy new software. Use what you have to start creating capacity for your team and reducing operating cost before investing in additional software. These tools generally have the ability to automate and make data entry more accurate, document processing (e.g., invoices), low value customer service tasks, simple content generation, and production quality creative processes.

UpSkill Employees

It's easy to identify employees who want to make things better and have the "get it" factor. They are naturally intellectually curious and find ways to optimize their time. You can build on natural curiosity with a good understanding of the business processes and analytics in order to develop effective automation solutions using popular methods such as Six Sigma. Once your team identifies and starts to automate the low hanging fruit, they should understand how to create, debug, and maintain automated processes, as well as how to troubleshoot any issues that may arise. Most of the time today, those employees don't need heavy programming skills but they do need to be analytical. It's not until we start integrating systems and screens that more programming skills are needed and even then, you don't need expensive developers.

Maintain Automations

Leaders should also have a plan in place to identify and address potential errors, as well as a process for identifying and resolving common issues. We commonly see breakage with technology updates. We also need to prioritize security protocols in order to protect the data and systems being automated. Leaders shouldn't put off operating and other system updates. They do need to know that certain automations may break and need to make sure teams have the capacity to troubleshoot as system updates are made.

Level-up

As companies continue to automate simple processes and tasks, the next level up becomes giving your data and business analysts the ability to act more like data scientists that help leaders become more predictive in how they operate. As this happens it's important to start thinking about the platforms and architecture behind automation, analytics, and routinized decision-making.

Words of caution:

AI and automation aren't immune from bias. Use caution to ensure that layoffs and system driven decision-making are regularly audited by your HR and legal team to protect the company from potential risk & costly lawsuits.