A while ago, I took my young son to a fast food restaurant, and one of the surprises I encountered upon entering was a touch screen as the first option. You could place your order there with a very intuitive and pleasant interface. My son chose his menu, and at the end, all I had to do was swipe my card. In seconds, it printed a number to pick up our order along with the receipt. The entire process took just two minutes.
This is just one of the many examples where a repetitive and predictable task can be replaced and optimized by software, thus improving business processes. Managers are always looking for ways to serve their customers faster, more effectively, and more efficiently; and the answer lies in a technology known as RPA, or Robotic Process Automation.
These robots are not how we imagined them in our childhood, where robots do the cleaning, just like Rosie did (the Jetsons’ robot maid, by Hanna-Barbera). No, these are algorithms applied to jobs with repetitive tasks.
Let’s imagine a call center where someone calls to request the sending of an account statement via email. For this task, there is already software that recognizes the request and performs all the processing on the computer, just as a person would. It is incredibly powerful. Additionally, the service can be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And given that one of the current trends is that fewer people are calling service centers, opting instead to chat online, these types of interactions can be even more easily managed by a computer.
According to a report by McKinsey, between 62% and 77% of customer service representatives can be replaced by automated software agents. In Guatemala, the call center industry has grown and generated many jobs, more than 30,000 according to the Ministry of Economy. However, based on statistics, within a period of 5 to 15 years, this figure could be reduced by 62% due to automation, which means more than 20,000 jobs could be replaced. So, the questions we must ask ourselves are: What can we do today to avoid being affected by these trends? Is one solution to invest in education to develop skills in more specialized tasks? There are many areas where software algorithms cannot replace human intervention, such as in the creative industry and software development.
Corporate leaders must adopt a new perspective in managing their processes, as the competition will soon begin implementing these Software Agents that will reduce costs and optimize service. It could be a wave that we either ride, or risk being left behind. It is the perfect opportunity to innovate in these jobs, as well as in the processes that involve a high volume of predictive and repetitive functions.
