How robots improved a telecoms provider’s human side

Our client is among the top digital communications companies in the UK, with millions of customers and thousands of transactions every day. Customer satisfaction is high but they need to work smart to keep it this way.

Maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.

The challenge

Capita has been steadily growing the number of automated processes in our client’s operations since the partnership began. But the legacy process for transactions – the ‘everyday’ processes such as SIM swaps or credit checks – left room for human error and had a turnaround time that the client felt kept customers waiting and didn’t live up to its high standards.  

We needed to find an efficient way of keeping their customers happy and connected, with improved, speedy and accurate services.

Our approach

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) was the answer. Capita worked with Blue Prism to bring in simple and agile RPA software to complement work previously performed entirely manually on processes such as transferring data from different sources and formats (spreadsheets, emails, etc).

We identified the top transactional processes that required no voice contact with the customer, had the biggest cost benefit, and opportunities for an improved customer journey. Rollout began with an initial 20 ‘robots’, which soon increased to 75, automating 15 core processes including SIM swaps, credit checks, order processing, customer reassignment, unlatching, porting, ID generation, customer dispute resolution and customer data updates.

The impact:

By April 2015: 

• Around 35% of all back office transactions had been automated
• Over 160 ‘robots’ were in action, processing between 400,000 and 500,000 transactions each month…
• …representing a three-year return on investment of between 650 and 800% percent
• The turnaround time for transactions was reduced from days to just minutes
• Customer ‘chase up’ calls reduced by over 80%. 

By 2017:

• 309 robots are processing 1.3 million transactions a month
• A reduction of 6,000 calls per month due to a new automated process for sim swaps
• Increased accuracy from 99% to 100% (10,000 errors per month to zero)

There are core transactions that need to be carried out thousands of times every day, transactions that make a big difference to the customer who’s waiting for their new phone, or swapping service provider. Often it’s their first time dealing with us, so we have to get it right. By automating these we’re not only reducing our operating costs, but we’re increasing accuracy and speeding up the whole process – both of which make a huge difference to their experience.

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