Is it high time to automate Promise Management in organizations?

What is Promise Management?

Promise management tracks, manages, and delivers on individual, team, or organization commitments or promises. Promise management aims to promptly, efficiently, and effectively fulfill promises while maintaining stakeholder trust and credibility. It covers many commitments, including customer, employee, supplier, and organizational promises. The process of promise management involves setting expectations, tracking progress, communicating updates, and holding individuals accountable for delivering on promises. Organizations can improve efficiency, accuracy, accountability, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes by effectively managing promises.

Promise Management Challenges:

Promise management refers to delivering on commitments to stakeholders, customers, employees, and other relevant parties. While promises provide a foundation for building trust and credibility, they also must be effectively managed. Here are the most common challenges faced in promise management:

Consistency with Stakeholder Expectations: It is essential to understand the expectations of each stakeholder and ensure that promises are consistent with those expectations. Otherwise, stakeholders may feel misled, and trust lost.
Transparency and Accountability: Promises must be transparent, and those responsible for delivering on them must be held accountable. It requires a clear understanding of roles, responsibilities, expectations, effective communication, and collaboration.
Adapting to Changes: Circumstances and requirements can change, and promises are adjusted accordingly. It requires flexibility, innovation, and the ability to pivot quickly.
Effective Communication and Collaboration: Effective communication and collaboration are essential to successful promise management. All team members must align on goals, expectations, and responsibilities; communication must be clear and consistent.
Risk and Conflict Management: Promises can be risky, and conflicts can arise. It is essential to have the plan to manage risks and contests and be proactive in identifying and mitigating potential issues.
Balancing Demands and Priorities: Promises often compete with other demands and priorities, and it can be challenging to balance these competing demands. Effective time management and resource allocation are essential for success.
Continuous Improvement is an ongoing process, and continuous Improvement is essential for success. Use regular reviews, analysis, and feedback to identify improvement areas and drive constant innovation and Improvement.

Promise management is a critical aspect, and in today’s fast-paced business environment, organizations must deliver on their promises. But keeping track of all the promises made by employees and departments can be challenging. Managers must fundamentally rethink how work gets done. Executives can overcome many problems in the short term and foster productive, reliable workforces for a long time by leveraging “promise management automation.”

This results in substantial improvements in individual performance, team performance, product and service delivery, organizational productivity, customer satisfaction (both internal and external), Increased coordination and collaboration, Increased employee engagement, and increased agility.

Automating promise management can bring several benefits to organizations, including:

Reduced customer churn: by delivering on promises and aligning expectations
Improved efficiency: Automating promise management eliminates manual processes and reduces the risk of human error, freeing up time and resources for other tasks by simplifying workflows and fulfilling promises.
Enhanced accuracy: Automated systems provide a central repository for all promises made by the organization, ensuring that all promises are tracked and accounted for.
Better accountability: Automation allows organizations to assign responsibility for each promise, promptly and efficiently fulfilling each promise.
Better decision-making: Automated systems can provide real-time data and analytics on the status of promises, enabling organizations to make informed decisions about their operations.
Improved customer satisfaction: By delivering on their promises, organizations can improve customer satisfaction, which is crucial for building trust and maintaining customer relationships. Improve customer experience and advocacy by aligning customer expectations, reducing repeat callers, and using real-time insights to gauge the pulse of the customer during interactions.

What enables automating Promise Management?

Combining RPA with Conversational AI will transform the customer experience, and the starting point for front-office automation is Promise Management.

Companies may automate every step of the promise management process using a Conversational Service Automation (CSA) Platform, including capturing and registering the commitment made, managing promise fulfillment through end-to-end workflow automation, and updating the customer way. Companies can easily capture, monitor, and manage the tracking of promises made during customer interactions using a CSA Platform. To achieve this intelligent, end-to-end automation requires core technologies, including:

Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI): Thanks to conversational AI, data can be quickly and automatically extracted from each contact center interaction. When combined with Natural Language Understanding (NLU), conversational AI quickly recognizes patterns and trends and helps operations a human operator cannot manage. Conversational AI detects and records particular NLU keywords related to promises or commitments made by live customer agent interactions. For instance, AI extracts named entities and promises made during the call when an agent says words like “would, should, will,” etc.
RPA and Workflow Automation: RPA bots work behind the scenes during every call, orchestrating and managing the identification, registration, and tracking of promises through their fulfillment. Rapid integration with other internal systems and increased adaptability to change are made possible by RPA bots. Workflow automation includes getting approvals as needed based on the nature of the promises, updating different system records, and notifying any change to the customer in real-time. AI-based automation records and tracks promise and updates during and after the call, and it immediately updates all relevant client records. The application also automatically generates any required customer notifications, outlining the promises made and the delivery timeline.

Automating promise management refers to using technology and processes to automate the tracking, management, and delivery of promises made by individuals, teams, or organizations. It automates routine tasks such as tracking, follow-up, and reporting. For example, an automated promise management system might automatically send follow-up messages, generate real-time reports on the status of promises, or assign and track tasks to ensure the delivery of promises on time.

What departments can leverage the benefits of automating Promise Management?

1. IT team within the organization- Automating promise management for IT teams within an organization can bring several benefits, including:

Improved collaboration: Automated systems can provide a centralized repository for all IT promises, enabling teams to work together more effectively and efficiently.
Better resource allocation: Automated systems can help IT teams manage workloads, allocate resources, and prioritize tasks more effectively.
Increased accountability: Automated systems can assign responsibility for each IT promise, ensuring its fulfillment promptly and efficiently.
Improved project management: Automated systems can help IT teams manage project timelines, budgets, and resource allocation, improving project delivery.
Enhanced visibility: Automated systems provide real-time data and analytics on the status of IT promises, enabling organizations to make informed decisions about their operations.

2. IT Service desk: Automating promise management for IT service desks can bring several benefits, including:

Improved response times: Automated systems can automatically assign and track IT service requests, addressing them promptly.
Enhanced customer satisfaction: Automated systems can provide customers with real-time updates on the status of their requests, enabling improved customer satisfaction
Increased transparency: Automated systems provide a centralized repository for all IT service requests, enabling IT service desks to track and manage requests more effectively.
Improved data accuracy: Automated systems reduce the risk of human error and ensure that data is accurate and up-to-date, leading to more informed decision-making.
Contact centers: Combined with Conversational AI, RPA, and Workflow Automation, a CSA platform can quickly identify promises from calls and track them to completion. By harnessing the power of AI-driven automation within a robust CSA platform, companies can optimize contact center efficiencies, automate repetitive tasks, and lower costs while improving customer advocacy and experience. While doing so, they more effectively meet customer commitments, improve brand trust, and increase customer satisfaction.
Customer Service: Automation can help departments manage and resolve customer issues more efficiently, improving customer satisfaction.
Operations: Automation can help operations departments manage production schedules, inventory levels, and other operational promises, ensuring that they are delivered on time and within budget.
Human Resources: Automation can help HR departments manage employee promises, such as vacation requests and performance evaluations, improving productivity and employee satisfaction.
Procurement: Automation can help procurement departments manage supplier promises, such as delivery schedules and quality control, leading to improved supplier relationships and reduced costs.

In conclusion, automating promise management in organizations is no longer a luxury but a necessity. With technology advancements, software tools are now available that can help manage promises made by employees, departments, or the organization. Organizations can improve efficiency, accuracy, accountability, and customer satisfaction by automating promise management, ultimately leading to a more successful and sustainable business.

Author:

Ramani Giri is the Senior Business Analyst at IGT Solutions’ Intelligent Automation Team. She has an overall 3 years of experience in the Travel and Hospitality domain. With expertise in Data Analytics, Process Automation, and Conversational AI for delivering back-office automation solutions. Outside of work, Ramani likes to swim, travel and read.

Reference:

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