Getting together with customers over dinner always provides a frictionless forum to share information and success stories. So we frequently do just that. Missed mingling over a meal with us? Have no fear. Here’s a synopsis of some of the themes that came up at our most recent user group dinners:

Theme: To create more customer-focused, end-to-end experiences, it’s critical to think about how to expand traditional automation programs.

• In other words, after automating tasks and processes, many customers are looking to automate customer-focused experiences.
• They’re asking questions, like: “Can automation help us respond more quickly to customer requests? If so, how?”.
• This is a goal worth working toward and one to keep top of mind.

Theme: Scale and growth are still at the heart of automation efforts.

• Customers shared big, hairy goals they’re looking to achieve. Here are some examples:
  • Double the amount of automation processes
  • Train more people in the art of automation with Build a Bot and Bot Games
  • Launch a Citizen Development program

Theme: An effective support model makes or breaks a Citizen Development Program.

• Customers want to enlist business-function-focused employees and “developer adjacent” roles to help scale their efforts.
• Support for these efforts can be handled in different ways, including:
  • Offshore models
  • A rotation system within the Development Team (one customer does this to increase engagement)
  • LOB support (Another customer requires the LOB to support their Citizen Developer’s new automation for 6 months. After 6 months, the surviving automations are rolled over to the CoE for support, but, by that time, they’ve proven to be resilient, valuable and easier to support.)

Theme: Creative evangelism is the key to Automation program scale.

One customer explained that visualization really helped sell Automation to the uninitiated in his organization. He created a really popular demo of bots running and completing tasks that a person normally does. Giving people a way to see automation in action helps them understand (and get enthused about) the power of Automation.