ABSTRACT
Service Automation (SA) is the application of computerised technologies to support and manage the service activities of the company whether these be through customer-facing staff or through self-service channels. Companies and their customers can experience many benefits from SA: enhanced service effectiveness and efficiency, greater service productivity, better agent work experience, and improved customer experience, engagement, and retention. Service automation applications offer a wide variety of functionality used in different contexts. Customer engagement- and call centre operations benefit from applications that support customer communications management, inbound and out-bound communications management, email response management, case management, case assignment, and escalation. Voice biometrics, predictive dialling, queuing, routing, and scripting support to customer service agents in call centres. Field technicians benefit from applications that support from job management, activity management, mapping and driving, spare parts management, and invoicing. Service managers enjoy technological support for agent management, contract and service level management, service analysis and development of workflow. Newer technologies such as chatbots and virtual reality are finding a place in the service automation landscape. As with other CRM systems, SA also poses costs to companies during implementation and maintenance. Employees also require training to use SA appropriately.
