RPA stands for robotic process automation. It represents some of the most cutting-edge technological developments of the modern era with its ability to improve efficiency gains in business operations. RPA uses software bots to automate tasks, eliminating the need for people to perform manual labor and other tasks that involve rote, repetitive processes.
RPA is deployed in many IT settings and is ideally suited for contact centers, which are intensely customer service-focused environments.
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The clear case for RPA in contact centers
RPA bots act in place of human operators, having first gained prominence in the manufacturing industry where low-skilled, labor-intensive tasks were highly prevalent. The introduction of RPA bots was not necessarily to replace human labor, but to displace and reallocate it for more productive endeavors.
In places like contact centers, for instance, they do a lot of the repetitive and boring tasks so that human agents are free to focus on more creative, value-adding tasks.
Typically, RPA bots work using an API, but they can also function and interact at a graphical user interface layer to execute complex workflows.
While RPA accelerates productivity, not all tasks, processes, or environments are ideal for process automation.
RPA is primarily used for the following:
- Tasks with standardized processes and functions that are predominately rule-based.
- Mundane tasks that are labor-intensive and time-consuming.
- Jobs that operate in reliable, data-rich, and data-driven environments.
- Workplaces that process high-volume, monotonous tasks and need consistent handling without experiencing diminishing returns.
- Business processes that use well-defined, standardized data sets that are easy to structure and categorize.
- Tasks that deal with a large volume of digitized data that’s adequately readable.
After selecting the right vendor, deploying robotic process automation requires capturing the steps you want to automate, executing the pilot process with your preferred vendor, and then implementing it.
When a contact center deploys one or many automated bots, it allows the center to scale its operations while delivering high-volume processes swiftly, accurately, and consistently without a downgrade in quality or efficiency. Moreover, RPA bots provide these benefits at significant cost savings compared to human agents who would otherwise be wasted on menial tasks. Ultimately, they allow human capital to focus on tasks requiring intuitive judgment.
For contact center employees specifically, RPA can automate numerous workflow tasks that are part of a typical workday. These tasks rarely have an impact on customer satisfaction outcomes, so contact center employees benefit from having more time to focus on activities that are more productive.
Additionally, RPA technology can also streamline certain tasks and fortify data security practices for the company, taking some of that burden off the employees.
At the same time, RPA bots don’t need to take bathroom breaks and can work all day long without experiencing diminishing returns.
Unattended and attended bots
For the most part, contact centers use unattended bots that execute processes behind the scenes. These unattended RPA bots are primarily provisioned to tackle rule-based processes automatically, which allows them to automate back-office services at scale.
Meanwhile, attended RPA bots require human intervention and/or instruction to perform tasks, as they typically do things that depend on the knowledge and expertise of a contact center agent. For instance, an attended bot can act as a virtual assistant that is manually triggered to gather customer information while the agent interacts with a customer.
Furthermore, an assisted RPA bot can even take the information it gathers from an agent’s computer and fill in forms with personalized customer details during a call. This makes RPA bots especially useful for agents who deal with various support chats, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls, and other routine data input processes.
The top opportunities for contact center RPA
Contact centers are filled with repetitive, time-consuming tasks that can drain efficiency and hinder customer satisfaction. RPA offers a powerful way to streamline these processes, reduce errors from manual entry, and free up agents to focus on more valuable interactions.
Here are eight key opportunities where RPA can drive significant impact and transform operations
1. Enhanced customer verification
While traditional IVR systems are effective for basic customer authentication — such as verifying account numbers or PINs — RPA goes beyond simple queries to handle more complex, dynamic verification processes.
For example, RPA bots can:
- Pre-validate customer information: Pull and cross-check data from multiple systems, such as CRM platforms and payment records, to ensure accuracy before escalating to an agent.
- Handle conditional logic: Adapt verification steps based on the caller’s issue or account status. For example, if a payment dispute is flagged, RPA can pre-authorize verification layers like confirming recent transactions or linking a verified email.
- Initiate advanced authorization: Request sensitive approvals, such as confirming account changes or processing refunds, without requiring the customer to repeat details to a live agent.
Beyond traditional identity verification, RPA also supports tasks like appointment confirmations. For businesses offering in-home services, RPA bots can proactively reach out to customers, verify service windows, and update scheduling systems — all without agent intervention.
This enhanced approach saves time, reduces friction for customers, and ensures agents are equipped with verified, up-to-date information when they step in to assist.
2. Automated self-service
Contact centers are often flooded with basic customer inquiries, like asking about product returns or how to file a warranty claim. These tasks don’t need a live agent, so they’re great candidates for automation.
A simple IVR phone tree can handle simple tasks, like pressing a number to check your account balance. However, IVR is limited in what it can do — if a customer needs to update their billing information, manage a return, or track an order status, it often can’t access the backend systems or process complex requests.
SEE: Learn best practices of setting up simple phone trees.
RPA goes beyond that. For example, if a customer wants to return an item, an RPA bot can guide them through the return process, check the product’s return eligibility, and generate a shipping label — and this is all done without human assistance.
It can also assist with updating account details, processing refunds, or even tracking shipments by pulling data from multiple systems in real time. This not only makes things faster for customers, reduces the burden on agents, and helps you get call center queuing times down during peak hours.
3. Optimized agent support
RPA can greatly enhance the effectiveness of human agents in contact centers by streamlining repetitive tasks and providing valuable support during customer interactions.
For example, RPA can automatically route inquiries to the right agent based on their skills and workload, ensuring that customers are quickly connected to the best-suited person. This reduces wait times and helps agents focus on cases they are best equipped to handle. RPA goes beyond traditional skills-based IVR by automating both front-end and back-end tasks, such as gathering customer data and updating records in real time, while IVR systems focus primarily on routing calls or providing scripted responses.
Additionally, RPA can retrieve and display relevant call center knowledge base articles or troubleshooting steps in real time, enabling agents to resolve issues more quickly. It can also update customer records, log interaction details, and process back-office tasks like returns and refunds, all while the agent continues to assist the customer.
SEE: Learn how to create a call center knowledge base your agents love to use.
By consolidating data from multiple systems and presenting it in an easily accessible format, RPA ensures that agents have all the necessary information to provide fast, informed, and personalized service, improving both efficiency and the overall customer experience.
4. Report preparation
Many contact centers need to produce reports for management to monitor the progress and evaluate key performance metrics.
While report preparation is a simple task for a human agent, it nevertheless requires a certain degree of decision-making that can distract agents from focusing on their daily workload. The process is also prone to error and takes significant time to carry out. Furthermore, it often compels agents to switch between multiple systems to generate data and run reports.
RPA can automatically gather and analyze contact center analytics, such as call volume, response times, and agent performance, to generate accurate, real-time reports without manual input, saving time and reducing errors.
RPA bots can rely on quick, automatic, and rule-based provisioning to generate, analyze, and disseminate reports (often via email) to respective managers.
5. Integrating systems
Enterprise software applications are creatures of immense complexity. Only a few vendors have the expertise or resources to supply all the critical functionality needed, and no enterprise system is completely siloed. This means integrations with third-party apps are necessary for a unified system.
This task is hard for any type of business software, but with so many moving parts, contact center integration is notoriously difficult to get right.
RPA can simplify this by automating data transfers and workflow automation between systems like CRM, ticketing, and payment platforms. RPA ensures real-time updates, reducing errors, saving time, and providing agents with accurate, up-to-date customer information, ultimately enhancing the contact center customer experience.
SEE: Discover how to improve contact center CX without buying anything new.
RPA’s ability to bridge system gaps allows contact centers to scale easily, integrating new tools or platforms without disrupting existing workflows. By automating system integration, RPA increases efficiency, reduces operational costs, and ensures a smooth, unified process across multiple systems, which leads to faster problem resolution and more personalized service for customers.
Although APIs make the task much easier, integrating various systems and workflows into your contact center is non-trivial. Using RPA, contact centers can integrate multiple systems without disrupting the underlying ecosystem.
6. Handling recurring and repeat calls
When a caller has to go through various transfers on a single call, it can be very irritating and detrimental to the overall customer experience.
RPA is a good resource to mitigate these occurrences, as it can keep track of particular issues surrounding a customer problem and relay that information to agents automatically. This helps agents understand the context surrounding a customer’s call or issue right away.
If necessary, RPA bots can also provide agents with a comprehensive customer profile at the click of a button so they can get a sense of an individual customer’s previous interactions.
This leads to a more personal and expedited communication process for the customer while also shortening the average call duration for the agent. This means customers are happier and agents aren’t wasting time transferring or answering calls they don’t need to.
In the end, RPA is an important contact center technology that streamlines routine call handling and improves operations. By automating tasks such as data retrieval, record updates, and providing real-time information to agents, RPA allows human agents to focus on more complex customer issues. This reduces wait times, enhances call efficiency, and ensures smoother interactions across channels. Additionally, RPA handles administrative tasks behind the scenes, enabling agents to resolve issues more quickly and creating a more seamless experience for both agents and customers.
