How can back-office automation enhance customer service and boost productivity?

The back-office is not a customer-facing area of the company, yet its impact on customer service is enormous. In the financial sector, back-office operations are responsible for key areas of customer care, such as account management, transaction and order processing, insurance claims, loan operations, billing and more.

A Capgemini study found that within the financial industry,  60% of customer dissatisfaction sources originate in the back-office.

An efficient back-office inevitably results in high levels of customer satisfaction. When these areas of the business are optimised to run fast and smoothly, companies can focus more on providing exceptional customer service.

What’s the solution?

Automation is a key way for financial businesses to achieve these goals. This technology has the ability to reduce operating expenses, boost productivity, speed up turnaround time, and much more.

Let’s explore the ways back-office automation can enhance customer satisfaction and boost productivity.

Best Candidates for Back-Office Automation
Companies who have yet to digitize their back-office operations find that their manual processes are slow and costly. They may find that they are trying to deal with hundreds, if not thousands of customer requests at a time.

But the majority of these manual tasks can be automated through process automation or intelligent automation. In fact, a McKinsey study found that one large universal bank was able to automate 85% of its 900+ end-to-end processes within the back-office.

These processes may include, but are not limited to:

• Customer onboarding and offboarding
• Payments processing
• Data entry and transcription
• Purchase order management
• Customer triage management

An article in Computer Weekly found that UK based bank Lloyds were able to achieve a 7% reduction in total costs and reduced their total of business processes from 700 to just 23 through their investment in automation technology. This case study was carried out in 2013, meaning that the capabilities for intelligent automation are far more sophisticated today.

Top Benefits of Back-Office Automation

Intelligent Financial Forecasting
Using automation forecasting tools, businesses can make smarter, more informed decisions.
In the banking industry, businesses can automate their financial reporting process which enables them to optimise time and cost savings, stay audit-ready, and gain total visibility on their accounts payable.

Organisations across all industries face the challenge of managing back office processes, and automation can be used to streamline these processes across the board. For example, we created a similar solution within the pharmaceutical industry, building an intelligent automation solution that was able to predict monthly prescription volumes to optimise their back-office processes and ensure on-time customer care.

Enhance customer experiences
Automation speeds up time-consuming processes that, if remained manual, can add to customer dissatisfaction and frustration. This applies to many areas of financial businesses, including bank transfers, bill payments, cheque clearances, onboarding, and more.
By combining flexibility and high levels of automation with security and deployment, we built an intelligent backend solution that integrated with multiple third-party providers to automate security, smooth the onboarding process, and add a plurality of digital banking features. As a result, over ten thousand freelancers and small business owners are able to bank on their terms without being slowed down or restricted by time-consuming back-office processes.

Customer care triage
Manual customer care systems mean that customers will often sit in a queue waiting for their query to be solved by an available agent.
By automating this triage process, financial institutions can streamline their customer service and enhance customer satisfaction.

From retail to finance, healthcare and telecoms, effective customer service is the cornerstone of success across all industries. By automating customer triage systems, organizations can significantly enhance the level of customer care they provide.. For example, we created a solution for a Telco company which used A.I. enabled programming techniques to automate tasks and decide the next best possible action to deal with customer queries.

How can automation enhance productivity in the back office?

By speeding up manual processes and freeing up employees for higher-value work, automation enhances overall productivity in the back office.

The productivity benefits of automation include: 

• Eliminating manual errors and improving the quality and accuracy of work
• Enhancing the efficiency of teams by allowing them to be reallocated to more intensive areas that cannot be automated
• Adapting to business growth by keeping up with increased back-office demands, removing unnecessary pressure from human workers.

There are seemingly endless applications for automation across the financial industry, and the back office is one of the best places to start the journey. When applied in this area of the business, organizations can enhance their customer’s experiences while simultaneously boosting productivity from within.