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How Cisco Is Transforming Customer Engagement Through Automation

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Countless companies rely on Cisco solutions for critical operations, from powering factory robots to providing patients with lifesaving care. So when a sales order needs expediting, or a technical query arises, high-quality, real-time customer care is critical. Yet tackling customer engagement on a case-to-case basis across multiple IT systems can lead to unnecessary delays and operational expenses.

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To minimize these risks, Cisco adopted a customer engagement platform. Since then, the company has automated nearly 20 of its key business processes and digitized more than 1 million case loads. The result is more than simply a frictionless customer experience. By replacing a traditional customer support module with fully digitized, end-to-end customer service, Cisco has realized significant business and IT benefits.

The Rewards Of Automation

Case in point: Cisco’s ordering system. The company receives a staggering 200,000 requests a year from customers asking to expedite order delivery. Processing these requests used to require agents to walk through 122 steps, 20 of which included painstakingly cutting and pasting sales order numbers into a hodgepodge of systems.

This has since changed. By relying on a digital agent to mirror the activities of a live customer support representative, Cisco customers can now change and update shipment dates on the fly, without any human intervention. Another example of automation at work is Cisco’s use of technology to detect order entry errors, such as a mismatched address. Through robotic automation and workforce intelligence, Cisco systems can not only quickly detect and correct order errors but also whittle down the time it takes to process them from eight hours to two—a significant advantage for a $50 billion technology company that oversees 3 million orders a year.

“Every year, we need to do more with less, so we’re always looking for ways to simplify processes yet operate at a better cost-to-serve,” says Gilles Leyrat, senior vice president of global business services at Cisco.

In addition to faster order processing, Cisco’s customer engagement platform has helped reduce its reliance on back-office support agents by more than a third—a savings in the “tens of millions of dollars,” according to Steve Power, senior director of digitalization at Cisco. That’s because time-consuming, high-volume transactions, once handled by entry-level agents, are now fully automated using an integrated platform. In fact, 95% of some cases processed through Cisco’s online customer service portal are resolved without the assistance of a live human agent.

Other benefits Cisco has realized through process automation:  

  • Eliminated millions of hours of customer wait time, as queries that once took 20 hours to process can now be completed in less than 5 minutes.
  • Reduced average handle time from 45 minutes to 20 minutes.
  • Improved team productivity by 25%.

Adding A Human Touch

These advantages aside, Cisco hasn’t completely divested itself of human help. Instead, the company is reinvesting cost savings in the hiring of highly qualified customer support agents—representatives with the specialized skills needed to field critical customer queries.

“We’ve gone from a traditional customer-service organization focused on delivery of cases to one where people can call and ask questions to get the right responses from agents that understand their business,” says Power.

In addition to improving agent quality, Cisco is also exploring intelligent routing as a means of automatically guiding customers to the most appropriate agent. Because in an era of critical operations, customers demand accurate, consistent and quick responsiveness—human or otherwise.

Lessons Learned

Given Cisco’s experience, here are three lessons other business leaders should consider when thinking about automation:

  1. Think fast—move slowly. Adopt a piecemeal approach to process automation. Begin by digitalizing high-volume tasks, such as order processing, to gain a better understanding of the rewards and challenges of overhauling business processes.
  2. Do your homework. Automation is not a solution for faulty processes. For example, if the process of manually updating customer information has always been rife with errors and delays, automation won’t make it any better. Instead, carefully review and modify long-established business processes before reimagining them as automated.
  3. Save to invest. Enhancing customer engagement is about more than automating time-consuming processes. Find ways to reinvest the money saved on manual transactions in highly qualified customer agents that can nurture high-touch customer experiences.

To learn more, download “The New Rules of Engagement: How Leading Companies Are Connecting With Customers to Drive Greater Growth.”