AI-Powered Process Automation Across the Customer Journey: Make Every Handoff Count

See how AI-powered process automation cuts manual work, errors, and delays.

AI-Powered Process Automation Across the Customer Journey: Make Every Handoff Count
A customer sees your entire organization. They see one unified company. In the eyes of the customer, people across different divisions within your organization collaborate to fulfill their request and continue the interaction. The customer expects seamless experiences across all the touches they have with your organization; an online form, email, phone calls, meetings, quotes, tickets, requests, etc. However, there is usually a big disconnect behind the scenes. Your staff use different tools across different divisions.

You can use AI-powered process automation to link up the disjointed processes. Usually, we are not trying to reduce the number of messages sent, we are trying to provide the easiest, fastest, and most relevant way to accomplish the next task.

Customer engagements begin even before sales calls

The process begins when a potential customer fills a form to request a product demonstration. They usually provide their name, the size of their organization, and briefly describe the purpose for requesting the demonstration. In a traditional set up, the request is shared across multiple staff in multiple tools. Then someone enters the data in the CRM and the sales rep tries to figure out what the request is all about.

Using AI business process automation, we can interpret the request, determine the interest, and provide a briefing to the sales staff. In a rule-based scenario, the system can determine if there are similar requests and notify the sales staff or automatically create a CRM record. If the request is not sufficient, the system can suggest a follow up question, based on sales best practices, rather than allowing a staff member to move a record to the next stage of the process that is not sufficient.

Relevance is more important than speed. Answering too quickly can build mistrust. The best approach is to take a little more time to ensure you understand the request. Provide your audience a way to verify or edit the suggested response.

Personalization should feel helpful

Asking the AI to pull every nugget of information about a customer and using that to create an individually tailored pitch is a dangerously blurry line. Most customers appreciate a company remembers the facts of previous interactions. Pulling every single morsel can give customers the creeps. This gets especially murky with highly personal information like health, family, or financial information.

Personalized and contextually relevant case studies are helpful. The AI is good at accessing information and suggesting next steps. Unrelated case studies create questions about consent and accuracy.

It is important to keep personalization grounded by the customer's request. Random compliments and overly familiar messages are signs of lost touch with the customer.

Expensive proposals are the result of disjointed processes. After the first discussion, the sales team will need to generate a proposal. Because the sales team knows the requirements, the operations team knows how to fulfill the order, and finance sets the rules around pricing, creating the proposal can turn into a minor coordination project.

Structured proposals can be drafted using information entered into the system via approved automation process. AI may generate a proposal summary using meeting notes, suggest the applicable service description, and/or draw information from approved prices. The account owner reviews the summary, and exceptions are approved by finance.

Automating the generation of portions of a proposal that follow a consistent structure, but contain contextual writing, reduces the repetitive assembly of proposals. Automation shouldn’t allow a model to establish prices or delivery or contractual commitments. A clear approval checkpoint protects the customer and business.

Continue the conversation during onboarding...

Winning a customer is only the first step. The handoff from sales to delivery can indicate whether a business is organized. Customers may have to provide the same documentation more than once, or explain their objectives and goals to more than one person.

Automation, perhaps using AI, can help define an onboarding process once a deal has closed. For example, a workflow can generate an implementation checklist, define an owner, and/or request missing documents. The employee can verify the document or summary against the contract.

The customer should be updated on the status of work, and what the next steps are. There is no need to create an unnecessary communication burst from the organization, just to ensure the customer is aware of work in progress.

Certain aspects of customer support require context and empathy

A lot of support roles have the burden of handling the weakest part of the journey. Customers describe their issue, wait for a response, and then are forced to repeat their story after being transferred. The goal here for workflow automation is to enable continuity.

In the meantime, an assistant can summarize previous messages. Based on the product involved, it can suggest help articles. For routine questions, the system can provide an answer based on the summary. For complaints or technical issues that have not been resolved or closed, it should be escalated to a person with the full case history.

Design the path for escalation so customers don’t have to “talk to a human.” It should be part of good service design.

Retention signals are more than a score

Weak signals are noticed by the business after a renewal is not made or after a lot of complaints have been logged. Automation can bring these signals together and investigate why.

Investigate these signals but don’t assume. A declining usage pattern may be because the customer has completed their project, but it could also be because the customer is unsatisfied. Assign the relationship manager the signal and let them determine whether they need to investigate and contact the customer.

AI-powered process automation reaches its full potential when it supports teams to notice what is important, as opposed to driving people to opaque scores. Customers should feel remembered, not monitored.

Measure the Journey

Marketing may report Lead velocity while Sales reports Poor Lead quality. Support may resolve tickets, only for customers to re-open the same tickets. Low levels of Department metrics may obscure high levels of Friction in the Customer Journey.

Friction often remains hidden by poor metrics. Track and measure handoffs. Counter-check the relevancy of responses with turnaround times and the timeliness of proposals. Measure proposed changes against reported defects and review feedback for evidence that customers feel understood.

Ask qualitative questions to understand customer journey and experiences. Your numbers may not tell the full story.

Automation is only as dependable as the processes around it. Use reliable identifiers. Integrate systems thoughtfully and handle errors. Limit access and retain data only when needed and/or required. Establish retention and audit rules for important actions.

Improve the customer experience one transition at a time

Improving the customer experience doesn't always require an expensive and complex technology overhaul. Start with a simple transition that causes your customers the most frustration, for example, the transition between the inquiry and the first response, the sales to the onboarding process, or the support to the follow-up process. Decide what information should be transferred, what action needs to occur, and what circumstances warrant a human decision.

Next, put the new experience to the test. Give your employees the ability to handle unusual requests, process incomplete forms, and address duplicates. Ask employees receiving the work if the new process provides enough context. Making the handoffs between processes more efficient is more important than making the process automation more complex.

The goal of process automation is not an absolutely automatic customer journey. The goal is an integrated customer journey. An integrated customer journey means the company feels like one entity from the first interaction to the renewal of a customer. Integrating the customer journey means customers don't have to repeat themselves and employees don't have to make avoidable mistakes.