In recent months, concerns about the economic impact of the pandemic have been closely tied with a spate of panicked automation headlines like, "Will Robots Take Our Jobs In A Socially Distanced Era??". Already we have seen that incorporating new technologies has led to a dramatic shift in the way industries operate worldwide. We are also witnessing a significant rise in interest for robotic process automation (RPA), intelligent automation and artificial intelligence among business leaders who realize that intelligent automation demonstrates strong transformative potential across all industries. Business leaders are accelerating the adoption of technologies they view as crucial to digital transformation efforts – like intelligent and robotic process automation – to help them thrive in this tumultuous business environment and beyond. Businesses are constantly met with new restrictions and 63% of business decision makers feel they are struggling to meet customer demands.

Prior to joining IPsoft, Chetan served as an assistant professor at New York University. A number of insurers are in the middle of pandemic-proofing their policies, but there is another category flourishing in the sector: technologies tailored to the needs of insurance companies (insurtech). Insurtech focuses on disrupting the industry through technological breakthroughs, and traditional insurance firms are starting to utilize innovative technologies to amplify the work of employees while enhancing the customer experience. The companies that are thriving have embraced the concept of a hybrid workforce -- a culmination of human and digital employees coming together for greater productivity, efficiency and service delivery. Powered by AI, digital employees allow insurers to easily scale their customer-facing processes in any climate.

As technologies become increasingly capable of taking on a wide variety of repeatable tasks, many workers may find themselves increasingly nervous about their place in the workforce. Anxieties about technology in the workplace are nothing new -- in fact, they go back centuries. The good news is that the fear of humans being replaced en masse by machines has never been borne out by reality. Rather, history has repeatedly shown that as machines transform whole industries, they also create new opportunities for human workers. Indeed, the US is one of the most developed economies, and therefore one of the most automated, but it also currently has record-low unemployment.

What false expectations are raised using RPA in companies? The advantage of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is that it automates repetitive, remedial tasks and frees employees to work on higher value tasks. But many companies believe RPA will enable them to automate even the most complex Business Process Management (BPM) activities, although there are much more suitable solutions available. The following overview shows which other misconceptions companies frequently use to counter RPA solutions. Misconception #1: RPA fully automates processes from A to Z It's the right decision to automate structured, repetitive tasks with RPA, as it's the best tool for this purpose. It shows its strength especially in shorter, repetitive activities of usually a few minutes.

Automating business processes is a cost-efficient way to ensure smooth customer service. With conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI), banks are starting to evolve customer service processes without having to invest in additional resource. In reality, the bank is giving every single customer a digital concierge that can help them find new products, research account and loyalty programme options, and even handle high-value tasks such as mortgage application processing or assisting the internal HR team with employee benefits selection. Routine transactions that require manual completion by bank staff cost businesses 20 times more than transactions handled by customers online, according to Bain & Company. Rather than dedicating staff (and 20 times the resources) to handling rote processes, banks should be focusing workers on only the most important tasks.

The potential for AI and automation are huge; McKinsey forecasts that the potential economic impact of automating knowledge work could be between $5.2 trillion and $6.7 trillion by 2025. And as we move into the new year, AI will continue to evolve beyond chatbots to something more akin to a digital colleague. While Alexa, Siri and their ilk might seem like modern-day inventions, the concept of the chatbot has actually been around since the 1960s with the creation of ELIZA by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum. Of course, ELIZA was fairly simple by today's standards. And in light of what is possible today, Star Trek's talking computer revealed the stunningly prescience of the series' creator.

Emotional intelligence is an essential skill in the customer service functions with the productivity and efficiency of the role is directly tied to the quality of conversations. The personal dynamics of emotionally cognisant customer service agents play an important role in empathetically resolving any queries or concerns, impacting customer churn and increasing brand loyalty by leaving customers with a positive impression of an organisation. However, rapid adoption of automation technology within customer-facing roles presents new challenges to organisations that want to harness its benefits, without impacting the service that it delivers to its customers. Already helping many companies increase customer service availability, reduce wait times and improve resolution rates, Gartner has predicted that a quarter of all customer service operations will use artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual assistants by 2020. In many organisations, this has resulted in the creation of a hybrid workforce of human and digital agents.

Emotional intelligence is an essential skill in the customer service functions with the productivity and efficiency of the role is directly tied to the quality of conversations. The personal dynamics of emotionally cognisant customer service agents play an important role in empathetically resolving any queries or concerns, impacting customer churn and increasing brand loyalty by leaving customers with a positive impression of an organisation. However, rapid adoption of automation technology within customer-facing roles presents new challenges to organisations that want to harness its benefits, without impacting the service that it delivers to its customers. Already helping many companies increase customer service availability, reduce wait times and improve resolution rates, Gartner has predicted that a quarter of all customer service operations will use artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual assistants by 2020. In many organisations, this has resulted in the creation of a hybrid workforce of human and digital agents.

Unlike BPM platforms, RPA isn't capable of managing processes end-to-end over a longer period of time. An example: A customer wants to order something, complain or obtain information. Accordingly, a process is triggered in the company. Sometimes it can take up to 14 days until the request is completed. Although the digital colleague can support the employee by retrieving data on the customer, decisions are still made by the individual.

The masters of cutting-edge AI technology recently granted me an advance visit to Amelia City, the not-yet-open lab and showplace for Amelia, IPsoft's notably humanesque AI. Amelia is so far best known for customer support/helpdesk applications (which is where my own clients, as a customer support and customer experience consultant, have encountered her to date) though her deployments have been expanding into other areas including medicine, HR, fundraising, and more. "Her" marquee clients already include some 20 of the Fortune 100, and the company is now developing pre-trained, limited-function mini-Amelias for small and medium-size businesses as well. Amelia City is at the very tip-end of Manhattan, with striking views of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty that are the mirror image of what immigrants starting a new life here would have seen. According to IPsoft CEO Chetan Dube (more from him soon), Amelia is going to bring nearly as dramatic a change to the inhabitants of our world: a new life both for better–economic results and freedom from drudgery–and worse–mass disruptions that will require workforce retraining and, probably, government interventions–and will do so with great inevitability. But let's not jump ahead.