Thanks to ongoing customer demands and a highly competitive market segment, telecom operators are continually looking for new ways to gain a competitive edge. One area, RPA (Robotic Process Automation), is helping to transform business processes across the telecom industry.
RPA is fits well in telecom. Firstly, this is because highly reliable and accurate process outcomes are imperative for telecom companies. Especially in those that are keen on boosting their customer service. Secondly, with RPA, the operational efficiency of companies is significantly enhanced. The solutions complete tasks behind the scenes and provide round-the-clock support as well.
Why Does the Telecom Industry Need Robotic Process Automation Now?
The main challenges faced by the telecom industry today is managing overhead expenses and maintaining productivity. Telecom companies have access to an inordinate amount of customer data which are oftentimes updated manually across different systems, databases, applications and platforms. All of this makes it highly prone to human error. Eventually this results in reducing productivity, thereby leading to a long turn-around time for customers. When compromising quality and performance, customer dissatisfaction is imminent.
similarly, another issue faced by telecom companies is around controlling overhead expenses. These can be for managing software, hardware, employee salaries etc.
How Robotic Process Automation can Help
RPA can be used to automate the back-end processes, including real-time updates that provide employees with relevant information based on the data analyzed and round-the-clock monitoring of systems. This frees up employees to focus on more value-intensive tasks, like handling client requests or acquiring new customers.
The ability to monitor data in real-time and check the quality of call traffic is critical for telecom companies. In these times, communication needs to be faster, more agile, and more dependable than ever before.
Key business areas that can benefit from automation include customer onboarding/offboarding, sales order processing, invoice management, responding to partner queries, first call resolution, data transmission, network management, etc. Subsequently, in all these areas, RPA reduces human errors and improves compliance considerably.
Reset Sleeping Cells Example
In my experience of working with RPA in the telecom industry, time and time again I have seen the benefits of automation. Firstly, the efficient flow of data, cost efficiency, increased productivity, all lead to customer satisfaction at the end of the day. To highlight the benefits and scope of RPA in the telecom industry, let me share an example, related to ‘Reset Sleeping Cells’
In telecom, cell towers follow different technologies. Some are on 2G, some on 3G, others on 4G and now, even 5G. The areas around these towers are typically divided into different sectors or cells. We consider it to have encountered a fault if these cells show no traffic for a span of 24 hours. Therefore, these particular, non-responsive cells are sleeping cells.
With the help of automation, we can install specific tools in these towers. They can detect a sleeping cell and intimate the RPA bot immediately. However, once the bot receives the email from the tool, it logs on to the particular application and resets the sleeping cell, rectifying the problem without any human intervention at all. After completing this task, the bot checks whether the reset has been successful, and traffic has resumed. It updates the ticketing tool accordingly if satisfied with the outcome. Subsequently, if the bot is unable to resume traffic, it assigns the task to a queue which then calls for human intervention.
This is only one of the ways automation improves productivity. It is only one of the ways it helps manage human resources optimally. The scope of RPA keeps growing each day. RPA works well in other industries as well. If you want to learn more about RPA, reach out! Similarly, reach out to discuss if it would be a fit for your organization.
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