How much of your staff’s time is spent doing repetitive tasks? How much of that time could they devote to more important issues? Automating these simple processes streamlines day-to-day responsibilities. If you manage operations for your call center, collection agency or office, identifying automation solutions that will impact your business should be a priority.

Why are automation solutions so important to a well-run business? Companies are seeing a growing reliance on software to run many aspects of their operations. However, each office is different, and the workflows that fit for someone else may not fit your company.

Understanding internal and consumer-facing processes is the first step to knowing what changes are both realistic and impactful. Looking for areas of automation will:

• Save employee time - which tasks are commonly repeated? Consider automating repeated tasks.

• Save company money - what are costly or time consuming tasks that could be automated?

• Simplify daily processes - identify which workflows happen on a daily basis and automate those daily workflows

Doing the work to automate these types of tasks can be time consuming, but keep in mind that the dividends of this work can simplify training and enable staff to shift their focus to more complex tasks.

Identifying opportunities for automation can be difficult. After all, it’s impossible to know all of the struggles every department faces each day. There are many ways to choose what parts of the process can be automated but two of the easiest ways are: input from employees and understanding the consumer journey.

Each employee in your company experiences their own challenges during a workday. To get the best perspective on how automation can streamline your business, you must hear from a wide cross-section of viewpoints.

Organize a working group that includes representatives from each relevant department and ask them to map out areas of opportunity for automation. Depending on how much experience you already have with automation, you can tailor these groups to fit your needs. For those who have already recognized problem areas, a group can be formed to brainstorm solutions. For companies newer to the process, you may simply ask your team to identify areas of improvement to pursue.

Do you know what your consumers go through from the time they receive a bill until the time their account is resolved? If you don’t know what your consumers go through to pay you – especially through digital channels – you’re probably missing out on areas of improvement.

If the digital customer journey is too long, too confusing or causes friction, payments will slip through the cracks. The customer viewpoint can shed light on areas where manual tasks damage the customer experience. Look for automation solutions that shorten the payment process and make it easier for staff and consumers to interact.

Normally automation is used to simplify repetitive, time-consuming tasks. There are other types of optimization you can look for in your office as well.

• Triggers in software - In some softwares, you can turn on automatic event notifications to be sent to a person or group when an event (like making a payment) occurs. This type of feature cuts down on time-consuming manual follow-ups.

• Removing redundancy - Some staff processes may predate the digital tools your office now uses. Conduct an analysis to ensure employees aren’t manually completing tasks your technology can perform.

• Combining tasks - Don’t overlook chances to combine tasks into fewer workflows. Explore the functionality of your systems, or look for new products to add to your tech stack that will streamline operations.

Some softwares offer open APIs that let you add automation within your system of record. For example, through an integration with PDCflow, you can process payments and your system of record can manage accounts. Our open APIs can be utilized to automatically sync payment data to your CRM.

Don't be afraid to ask your system of record to add automated functionality via APIs. Many software vendors are willing to explore new integration partnerships like those available with PDCflow.

If your agency or your system of record doesn’t have the resources to take advantage of open APIs, you can still access other types of automation directly. For example, PDCflow supports automated email notifications for payments made. That way, your team members can know about payments immediately via their inbox.

Do your current tools offer features that streamline workflows? PDCflow’s FLOW Technology helps businesses connect with consumers faster while capturing payments, esignatures and photo uploads.

Our flexible workflow tool, FLOW, makes it easy to roll many tasks into a single action and automate event notifications, compliance and sending receipts to consumers.

• Call Centers - keep agents PCI compliant and reduce fraud risk. Use FLOW Technology so consumers can enter their own sensitive payment information, keeping their data secure and reducing your PCI scope in a single action. One PDCflow extended business office client increased credit card payments and reduced PCI scope through their use of FLOW Technology within their call center.

• Healthcare - collect a photo of a patient insurance card before appointment check-in. With a HIPAA compliant photo upload request through FLOW, your healthcare office can gather and verify the necessary documents before patients even show up for their visit.

• Medical Billing - send automatic reminders to those enrolled in recurring payment schedules. With PDCflow, you can configure your payment schedules to automatically send a payment reminder to consumers. This reminds them of their payment, keeps your organization compliant and reduces the need for manual reminders. These automated messages also reduce failed payments by reminding consumers to reach out to an agent if they can’t pay or if their card on file has expired.

If you want to streamline how agents complete tasks, keep data secure and reduce the risk of human error during payment collection, learn how FLOW Technology can help. Download our Solution Brief for call centers now.