No business today can deny the benefits that digitization brings. Especially in the world today after the pandemic, there has been a need for efficiency to maintain growth and even survive the tough competition. So businesses are spending more on digital transformation plans.
So, adopting automation has become a “can’t do without”. It has become a crucial part of any business to drive down costs, increase efficiency and enhance both customer and employee satisfaction.
And that’s what Chatbots and Robotics Process Automation are for. This automation helps businesses streamline various processes and get rid of manual, paper-based processes. These tools have emerged as new technologies to gain data and execute more agile operations. But, it’s easy to get confused with both tools as both focus on automation. But there’s a difference between them. Let’s have a look.
Chatbot Vs RPA: Difference between Chatbot and RPA
The primary motive of both chatbot and RPA is to automate time-consuming manual processes. Yet, there’s a difference between what they automate and how they automate.
RPA is process driven. It automates pre-built processes for the end users. Which means it automates tasks that are programmed by humans beforehand. Whereas AI chatbots are data-driven. They enable systems to learn from data without being explicitly programmed.
RPA can only understand structured data. Meaning that it can only do basic automation. But, chatbots work with sophisticated structured data.
RPA is incapable of intelligent thought. But chatbots develop their logic and improvised actions with the help of NLP and ML.
Chatbots are used for external business purposes like customer service and marketing. And RPA is used for internal organizational purposes like assignments.
The implementation of RPA is cheaper compared to chatbots.
While RPA uses the existing IT infrastructure of the system, chatbot requires a whole team of software development teams to work on it.
Examples of Chatbot and RPA
A. Chatbot
1. Checking inventory and finding products
Customers sometimes don’t find what they are looking for. So checking the inventory for that specific item can solve the problem. However, customer support representatives will have to check the inventory manually, whereas a chatbot is capable of providing a prompt answer by looking through the site’s database.
Chatbot asks questions to customers, and based on the given answer, it offers personalized recommendations for them.
2. Performing exchanges and refunds
Exchanges and refunds are very common and repetitive requests customer support representatives get. Businesses mostly have a policy in place for processing such requests. These requests are monotonous and repetitive to support representatives.
A well-trained chatbot collects required information like order number and reason for the exchange and refund. And then, it checks whether the product is eligible for exchange or refund as per the company’s policy. Further, the chatbot assists customers with regular updates regarding the refund process.
3. Order confirmation and tracking shipping
Customers want updates regarding shipping information once the order is placed. Chatbots offer a convincing and accessible way for customers to get information about their orders. Unlike the traditional way, where a customer had to go through a long process of navigating through complex websites.
Once the order is confirmed, the chatbot sends an automated message with details like item, quantity, price, estimated time of delivery, etc. Apart from that, it sends customers notifications when their order is out for delivery. Customers can then track the package in real-time.
4. Appointment booking
The advanced AI chatbot can enable automated appointment booking to help customers book instantly from various social media platforms. That’s why industries like health care, hospitality, and personal services are embracing chatbots to a great extent. You can connect your chatbot with a calendar and offer appointment slots to your visitors. The chatbot analyzes the company’s calendar and confirms availability for the requested time and date. Everything without human aid.
B. RPA
1. Data migration/entry and form processing.
While shifting from legacy systems to newer systems, employees need to transfer the relevant information, too. RPA can take care of such a manual process and complete it without any errors. The RPA solution reads the paper form and then gets the data into the system and frees humans for complex tasks.
2. Customer order processing
The whole process of placing orders is similar from start to end. And employees for such repetitive tasks can be time-consuming as well as mundane, and also have chances for more errors. RPA solutions can be programmed to automatically fill up order details from orders received via different channels into the company’s order processing system.
Not only that, the RPA can be programmed to validate orders against specific criteria like product availability and customer credit limits. It lowers cost, boosts ROI, and improves customer experience.
3. System setup
When a new employee is introduced to your organization, you’ll have to provide the employee with an email account, software license, and computer devices. These tasks can be easily handled by RPA without any human help. The process remains the same and automation is possible.
4. Processing payroll
RPA solutions can extract useful data from timesheets, calculate employees’ pay, and perform the necessary bank transaction. It also generates payslips automatically and accurately. Hence, there’s a chance of less error.
How to choose the right solution for your business?
Choosing the right solution for your business depends on the requirement and goals of your business.
Chatbots are designed to interact with humans in near-to-human language whereas RPA operates in the background without any human interaction. So chatbots are capable of handling large volumes of interactions with customers.
However, RPA should always be a part of the AI chatbot to automate business processes in an intuitive and scalable way.The combination of RPA and AI results in the use of big data and predictive analytics, which gives AI the power to perform complex tasks.
Final thoughts
We’ve concluded that conversational AI improves customer and employee engagement, whereas RPA underlines time-intensive processes.
If you combine the power of both, there is going to be a huge transformation. Businesses can reap enormous benefits from both technologies at once.
If done well, the integration of AI chatbot and RPA can take automated processes to the next level.
The cognitive intelligence of AI chatbots can enhance the automation capabilities of RPA. Their partnership can boost process productivity and efficiency. It would help companies deliver meaningful customer and employee experiences and further generate value for all stakeholders.
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