89% Of Your Employees Could Benefit With This One Change

When customers don’t get the service they expect, their loyalty shifts. Data shows 91% of customers are more likely to make another purchase after a great service experience. Even more telling, when customers experience long wait times, 70% will choose not to buy from the company again.

A similar dynamic exists between employers and employees. Employers must deliver a great experience for employees — or risk losing them. This is especially true now, during “The Great Resignation” as HR (human resource) and IT (information technology) teams face a massive volume of onboarding. While 4.3 million people quit their jobs in December, 6.3 million were hired, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Automation has become a life preserver to keep up with both customer and employee expectations. In fact, 95% of IT and engineering leaders say their organizations are prioritizing workflow automation.

Here are four automation trends we see in growing organizations based on the findings. Add these to your playbook for a competitive edge.

1. Employees use automation to solve everyday business problems

Low-code tools have made automation more accessible to everyone. Business users acting as “citizen developers” can easily streamline workflows. This can be as simple as automating a workflow that schedules follow-up sales calls or creating a workflow in Slack that automatically posts messages. By 2023, Gartner predicts “the number of active citizen developers at large enterprises will be at least four times the number of professional developers.”

Even as more business teams use low code, professional developers and IT teams will continue to rely on pro-code tools to scale automation. Business teams can now build reusable components that anyone can use to automate processes, helping to remove bottlenecks across the organization. Reusing components empowers business users to solve problems and frees up IT and professional developers to focus on more complex needs. It’s a win-win. Survey data shows 92% of IT leaders are comfortable giving business users access to low-code tools, as long as the proper training, governance, and processes are in place.

2. Automated processes break down organizational silos

Traditionally, there hasn’t been an easy way to connect different systems, data, or workflows without having to write a lot of complicated code. According to MuleSoft’s 2022 Connectivity Benchmark Report, 90% of IT leaders say data silos leave organizations disconnected from the data they need to understand their customers, partners, and employees. Low-code automation bridges that divide with pre-built connectors and point-and-click tools to unite processes, data, and systems. And breaking down those organizational silos means employees can deliver a seamless customer experience while also improving their job satisfaction.

A recent Salesforce survey found 89% of full-time workers are more satisfied with their job due to automation. And 91% say automation saves them time and offers better work-life balance.

3. Automation supercharges the customer experience

Employees and customers use automation nearly every day. But it’s often siloed with teams needing to work together to resolve customer support requests. That’s changing.

Customer experience is still the most important factor in competitive differentiation. Eighty percent of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its product or services.

Automation bolsters that experience. Consider, for example, what happens when a sales rep adds a new customer to the CRM. With automation, the CRM then creates and organizes events that map to the customer’s entire lifecycle. Whether it’s a potential service request or contract renewal date, each event kicks off the next automated process in the CRM. Connecting automated business processes to the customer journey makes it easier for anyone interacting with that customer to deliver better, more personalized service.

4. Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) become a dynamic duo

Automation and AI are starting to work more closely together, and that trend will continue to grow. Our latest Workflow Automation Report revealed 78% of IT and engineering leaders either currently use or plan to use AI as part of their workflow automation initiatives.

One of the best examples is an AI-powered prediction about which customers might churn. On its own, AI creates a prediction, but someone has to notice it, decide if it requires action, and then do something about it. If employees overlook that prediction, they’ve missed an opportunity to keep a valued customer.

Automation provides that crucial last-mile effort to turn AI insights into recommendations and get them into the right person’s hands at the right moment to make an impact. In the example above, the CRM can automatically notify a service agent to offer a well-timed loyalty discount while they’re on the phone with the customer.

Workflow automation will continue to change work for the better

Customers expect streamlined interactions. Employees embrace automation that removes friction from their day-to-day lives. And businesses see the impact on everything from productivity to employee and customer satisfaction to revenue. Looking ahead, automation will lead to more dynamic applications that will change the way people engage with organizations and how organizations think about the next generation of user experiences. Now it’s your turn – how will you use automation to make a difference?