Case Study: Call Centre Order Placement Automation for Global Oil and Gas Client
Deployment of RPA Bot Eliminates Order Capture Errors, Dropped Calls and Customer Wait Times
The Client
Our Client is a global chemicals and energy company in the Oil and Gas Industry. They source, produce, and market a range of high-quality products in 23 countries worldwide. In 2020, they faced challenges like they had not seen before in their 70 year history.
In order to address these challenges they revised their strategy and operating model to a more simplified and streamlined one. With their focus where they believed there were good growth prospects, lower risk, evolving consumer needs and megatrends.
The Challenge
Our Client was experiencing both Customer and Contact Centre challenges that needed to be resolved. The Customer Challenges included:
- A large percentage of dropped calls – with on average 3000 to 3500 calls per month at least 20 percent were dropped (600 to 700 calls)
- Long wait times – Customers waited between 5 to 10 minutes on average.
- Order accuracy – Manual capture of orders resulted in at least 5 percent of orders being incorrect (150 to 175 orders).
- Long order capturing times – Orders were taking on average between 8 to 10 minutes to capture.
- No scaling of Agents for peak periods – Current capacity for Call Centre agents is limited to 6 agents.
- Fixed operating times – the operation hours of the Call Centre were from 8am to 6pm
In addition to these customer challenges there were also the following Contact Centre Challenges that needed to be addressed:
- Order process is resource intensive – 8000 manual orders, on average, are processed per month
- Highly repetitive order taking process with little automation
- Opportunity for errors is high – 10 percent estimated error rate
- Resource pool availability is stressed
- Demand varies but resource pool is fixed
- Low and slow uptake on portal – only 35 percent of retail customers
The Solution
Working with the Client the typical ordering process was mapped and evaluated. After the review of this process the solution arrived at was to transform and automate the capturing process. An RPA Bot was created to transform voice into text. Additionally the Bot would transform all other text-based information into orders. These orders would then be processed 24/7 with minimal to no human intervention.
Ordering Process Mapped and Evaluated
Transformed Digital Capturing Process
This solution addressed both the customer and organisation challenges the company faced. The key benefits this solution provided to our client’s customers were as follows:
- Orders were able to be placed anytime, on any channel
- No wait times to place orders
- Immediate acknowledgement of the order
- Real-time and error free order capture
- 24/7 operations enabled
- Ability to scale the Bot up and down to meet seasonal or cyclical demand at minimal costs
- Leverage existing technology assets to drive digital agenda at minimal costs.
Results
The client value delivered with the digital automation of the order capture process has resulted in both happy customers and call centre agents. There are no longer dropped calls. The customer experience is enhanced by being able to place orders at any time, across any channel, including email, voice and instant messaging. All with minimal to no wait time.
The value gains and cost savings for our client, was the visibility and auditing of all client orders placed which previous could be neither monitored nor managed. Secondly, order capture inaccuracies were eliminated, removing all rework and recapturing. Finally the RPA Bot now handled the mundane tasks, freeing the humans up to do more complex and value add activities.
