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.