Enterprises are actively exploring how to leverage digital technologies to transform both customer-facing and internal processes with the goal of making them more fluid and less laborious. Against this backdrop – as well as in response to the difficulty of hiring customer service staff in many regions today, the potential for employing automation in the service of these opportunities and challenges has captured the interest of many customer care organizations.

While automation is not new – we've been steadily at it in the business world for the last 200 years, recent advances have expanded the range of activities to which it can be applied. Many activities within the customer care realm, previously assumed to be the exclusive domain of humans, are among these. From empowering customers to more easily find answers and execute straightforward transactions without care associate assistance, to freeing associates from the drudgery of manual keying of the same information into multiple systems, customer and internal-facing software robots are already being used by trail-blazing care organizations to improve customer and employee experience, as well as reduce costs.

But it is still early days for automation in customer care. Some organizations have dipped their toes in with small implementations, others are on the verge of doing so. Many are curious to learn about the different types of automation, specific use cases others have pursued or are exploring, how others earlier in the consideration process are thinking about it – and questions they should be asking to assess the possibilities for automation in their own operations.

Join us for this session at which we'll explore the spectrum of automation approaches available for use in customer care applications today – from customer and employee-facing "bots" and intelligent virtual assistants to "behind the scenes" desktop and process automation. UWEBC member company Mason Companies will lead off our exploration of the theme by discussing a significant win they realized from interaction automation by deploying a conversational virtual assistant in their IVR. Then, subject matter experts from SmartAction and Pega will discuss what is possible today with virtual agents/chatbots and robotic process automation respectively, as well as promising use cases and considerations for getting started with these automation technologies. Following the presentations, the balance of the day will be devoted to discussion and practice-sharing in both smaller-group breakout and full-group discussion formats focused on specific aspects of the contact center automation theme of interest to participants.

Participate in Customizing the Agenda: You’ll have the opportunity to play an active part in shaping the agenda for this session – and to maximize its relevance for you – by suggesting and selecting topics for break-out discussions. Once the agenda is complete, you choose the discussions you want to join. This will be a highly interactive session so come prepared to share your questions, challenges and insights!

Webcast Available: If you can't make it to the event in-person (or if in-person registration has reached capacity), you can still register to attend from your computer. This option allows you to view the presentations, while attending in person provides you with the opportunity to participate in break-out discussions, ask questions or take advantage of networking opportunities. To attend the webcast, click the "Register for webcast" button on this meeting's homepage. You will receive a confirmation email with the link to the webcast a week before the meeting.