There's been a rapid increase in the adoption of low-code and no-code platforms in the past two years as organizations see the benefits of putting application-building in the hands of business users while reducing the burden on resource-strapped IT teams. Valoir has seen the use and value of low-code expand beyond automating basic tasks and delivering data to more complex integrations and workflows. However, in many cases, low-code hasn't made it to the service organizationmndash;and that's a mistake. If you're not leveraging low-code capabilities in your service and support center (including the contact center) today, you';re missing out on opportunities for greater value, flexibility, and agility.
Low-code and no-code platforms enable business users to build applications and automate processes with little or no coding or IT support, using a drag-and-drop graphical user interface to expose and present data, integrate applications, and automate workflows. As the names suggest, no-code capabilities require no intervention or coding, whereas low-code may require more coding knowledge or IT involvement. If your company is using modern CRM applications, you've probably already been exposed to some low-code capabilities, as most applications provide some configurability and process automation without the need for coding. Most provide both low-code and no-code options within their platforms; depending on the type of process you're automating and the level of complexity, you might want some IT involvement. However, most also provide prebuilt integration and visual data mapping tools so coding is not a requirement for many integration projects.
Valoir has seen that the customer service organization has been slower to adopt low-code than some other departments, such as sales and marketing, and missing out on the benefits. If you're not taking advantage of low-code technologies today, here's what your missing:
- Increased productivity. By enabling business users to automate tasks and workflows and provide more rapid access to the application data they need, low-code applications can reduce swivel time and drive significant increases in productivity.
- More rapid response to change. Using low-code capabilities enables service organizations to more rapidly deliver new workflows and processes. With low-code, they can rapidly build and launch workflows to support changes, like a spike in cases related to a specific issue, without waiting for IT to build, test, and deliver new workflows or applications.
- Greater flexibility over time. When business users build and own the process automations supported by low-code, they can make changes as needed to support greater efficiency without burdening IT.
- Accelerated time to resolution. Whether it's deploying and adapting a low-code chatbot to address a specific customer self-service need or building other customer- or agent-facing applications that can automate access to or action on information, low-code applications can increase positive self-service outcomes and accelerate case resolution when agents are involved.
With all these benefits, why haven't customer service organizations been quicker to adopt low-code technologies? In other areas, the most rapid adoption has been driven by business users who seek to automate manual processes that slow down their days. For agents working on an hourly basis and focused on metrics like average call resolution times, the motivations for exploring low-code options might be different from their salaried peers in other areas. Although managers can take the lead, empowering the rank-and-file to explore low-code is likely to help identify opportunities to reduce swivel time and deliver benefits. Here are some tips to get started:
- Provide training opportunities and encourage experimentation in low-code for agents and managers. If you explore your current CRM relationships, you're likely to find your vendor has capabilities, training, and communities of support that can help you explore potential uses and benefits of low-code in your organization.
- Identify and cultivate agent adoption and best practices like you'd champion any other metric on the leaderboard of your contact center. Once tech-savvy agents understand the potential of low-code, recognizing their efforts will drive broader adoption and benefit.
- Build a foundation that scales. Beyond free and freemium experimentation, look to low-code providers that can help with governance, project re-use, and management that ensure low-code wins aren't just one-offs but can be consistently and scalably replicated.
- Make measurement part of the process. Keeping track of low-code projects that deliver greater efficiency for agents and giving credit where credit is due is important. Where an individual team member's effort to automate or streamline a process might not be clear in individual productivity or performance, even small efforts at automation can have significant benefits when multiplied across teams and should be measure and rewarded.
Low-code technologies can help increase agent productivity, improve customer experience, and improve customer service flexibility and agility by putting the ability to automate workflows and deliver data in the hands of service teams who know where the real improvement opportunities are. On an ongoing basis, as you look to build greater agility into your service operations, low-code can help you drive greater flexibility and responsiveness to evolving customer requirements with less dependence on IT and deliver a better and more consistent customer experience.
Rebecca Wettemann is CEO and principal of Valoir.