Workflow automation: Definition, benefits, + examples

Every business has its share of manual tasks: performing data entry, routing customer queries to the right team or agent, and creating employee schedules, to name a few. However, how you choose to complete those tasks says a lot about the future of your business—stagnant organizations think they have to, while successful organizations know they can use automation.

Workflow automation can streamline those repetitive tasks, freeing employees to work on more important activities. This guide provides a deep dive into workflow automation, including benefits, examples, and how it can contribute to more efficient customer experiences.

In this guide:

• How workflow automation works
• What are the benefits of workflow automation?
• Workflow automation examples
• 5 steps to start automating workflows for your business
• Frequently asked questions
• Level up your workflow automation with Zendesk

How workflow automation works

Workflow automation helps teams complete tasks with limited human input. Your team can typically achieve this through identifying triggers and defining conditions.

Here’s how it generally functions:

1. Identifying triggers: You can define triggers based on specific events or conditions. These triggers can include actions like a new ticket submission, a ticket status change, or a particular keyword in a ticket.

2. Defining conditions: Once you set triggers, establish conditions that determine when the automation will execute. These conditions can include criteria such as ticket properties, requester information, or custom fields.

3. Creating actions: After setting triggers and conditions, define the actions that should occur when the automation is triggered. These actions may include sending notifications, updating ticket properties, assigning tickets to specific agents or groups, or executing custom scripts.

Conditional statements and triggers act as an automated roadmap for task completion. In other words, Task B happens when somebody completes—or triggers—Task A.

However, workflow automation doesn’t stop with singular tasks; you can string together several steps to create fully automated processes.

What are the benefits of workflow automation?

Workflow automation can improve an organization in several ways. Here are some of the top benefits.

Increased organizational efficiency

Workflow automation can streamline or eliminate repetitive tasks, empowering your staff to prioritize more impactful activities. This can lead to more efficient employees, improved team productivity, and more effective workforce optimization (WFO).

For example, AI can suggest replies to customer questions based on learned business procedures to help agents deliver faster support. The Zendesk agent copilot acts as an intelligent assistant, suggesting contextually relevant responses and actions based on customer interactions that agents can modify or execute, streamlining the ticket resolution process.

Improved customer experience

With workflow automation, businesses can provide a more consistent and reliable customer experience (CX). Automation can ensure customers experience timely responses to queries and quick issue resolution—for example, routing customers to specific service agents based on skill, availability, and more. It can also notify agents when a customer’s request has remained unresolved for a certain period.

An automation-first strategy delivers better support because it can help businesses meet service level agreements and minimize delays, which creates a happier customer base.

Added scalability

Successful businesses grow—and with that growth comes an increase in customer interactions. Workflow automation empowers organizations to scale their customer support team effectively and handle larger volumes of work. It can do this by empowering agents to assist multiple customers simultaneously without sacrificing efficiency or thoroughness.

Boosted employee satisfaction

Workflow automation can streamline mundane and repetitive tasks, allowing employees to engage in more meaningful work. So, for example, rather than spending their day manually triaging tickets or processing returns, staff can focus on strategic tasks, professional development, and enhanced problem-solving. This can help them do their jobs better and increase the employee experience (EX).

Reduced costs

Organizations can use automation to create a team of efficient employees. This efficiency helps them interact with multiple customers simultaneously, focus on more productive work, minimize errors, and more. All of this contributes to lower operational costs by increasing productivity.

Workflow automation examples

Businesses can utilize workflow automation for various functions. Here are some of the most impactful use cases in customer experience.

Agent notifications and reminders

Organizations can use agent notifications and reminders to give team members real-time alerts about pending tasks, upcoming deadlines, or required follow-ups. With Zendesk, for example, you can notify:

• Agents when an assigned ticket remains unresolved for x number of hours

• Agent groups when a new ticket remains unassigned for x number of hours

• An assigned agent after x number of hours when a pending ticket has been updated by the requester

These notifications keep workflows on track and reduce the likelihood of missed actions, enhancing the customer service experience.

Intelligent ticket routing

When a customer contacts a business with an inquiry or problem, that creates a support ticket. Intelligent routing can send those tickets to the most qualified agent based on customer sentiment, intent, and language. You can combine it with omnichannel routing to direct support tickets based on agent skill, status, capacity, availability, and conversation priority. Together, they give you a powerful, automated system for customer requests.

As an example, let’s look at Liberty, a UK-based premium department store retailer. Around 2015, the company had grown its online presence to account for nearly 50 percent of total sales, and it needed a partner to manage the rise in customer service requests. Liberty partnered with Zendesk to get customer issues routed to the right place so the team could solve them quickly. This change helped the company achieve a 73 percent decrease in first reply time and a 9 percent increase in customer satisfaction.

Agent copilot

Zendesk agent copilot is an advanced AI-driven assistant that supports customer service agents in two ways:

Agent copilot mode: It acts as an intelligent assistant, suggesting contextually relevant responses and actions based on customer interactions. Agents can use these suggestions to approve, modify, or execute tasks, streamlining ticket resolutions.
Autonomous mode: It operates independently to resolve specific high-volume, routine tickets—such as order cancellations or status updates—without agent intervention.

These modes create a seamless blend of AI and human expertise, improving the speed and quality of customer service.

Automated quality assurance and agent scheduling

In addition to providing automations for agents working on tickets, workflow automation tools can streamline processes for managers and administrators running operations. This saves them time to focus on more productive tasks.

For example, with an automated customer service quality assurance solution like Zendesk QA, you can use AI to review 100 percent of your support interactions and automatically spotlight churn risk and outliers. Furthermore, AI-powered WFM tools like Zendesk WFM can forecast staffing requirements and use those insights to create optimized schedules automatically.

5 steps to start automating workflows for your business

Now that we’ve explained workflow automation, we’ll dive into how you can harness it in your CX organization. Here are our five top tips for customer support workflow automation.

1. Set clear goals and objectives

First, you must establish clear goals and objectives. Define what you want to achieve, whether that be increased efficiency or scalability, cost reduction, or faster customer resolutions.

Consider creating service level agreements (SLAs) to guide your goal-setting. These written agreements help define your standards for customer support, reflecting your support quality, availability, and timeliness.

2. Identify repetitive tasks

Next, find repetitive and time-consuming tasks suitable for automation, such as data entry, approvals, routing, ticket tagging, and other similar actions. You can identify these by reviewing bottlenecks in current processes, analyzing your support data, and asking relevant stakeholders for thoughts and suggestions.

3. Embrace AI and automation

You can’t effectively conduct workflow automation without embracing automation, AI, and intelligent automation (IA). Incorporating automated technologies can help you handle complex tasks, make data-driven decisions, and create more efficient workflows. For example, you can implement intelligent routing to speed up agent response times and increase customer satisfaction.

Also, be mindful of the quality of AI and automation you use, as not all systems have the same capabilities. At Zendesk, our AI is built on billions of real-life customer service interactions so you can instantly deliver effective and personalized support.

4. Select the right workflow automation software

Choosing the right workflow automation tool is crucial. You’ll want to select a partner that is fast to set up, easy to use, scalable, and aligns with your business needs. Not to mention, CX teams need automated privacy tools, so you should also strongly consider data security.

Zendesk, for example, checks those boxes and more with advanced AI for customer service. We can help you operate at scale, eliminate repetitive tasks, and more.

5. Review and improve

Assess your workflow automation regularly to ensure it is performing effectively and helping you reach your goals. Conduct regular audits to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies and monitor customer service metrics. You can also get input directly from your employees to evaluate how your system is helping them.

Frequently asked questions

Level up your workflow automation with Zendesk

Workflow automation can help you streamline your CX processes and eliminate repetitive work for your support team, leading to faster resolutions for customers. But not all workflow automation software is created equal. Only Zendesk AI is built on billions of real customer service interactions, powering intelligent workflows that assist your support agents in real-time, help you operate at scale, and optimize your entire customer experience operations. It’s fast to set up and easy to use yet powerful enough to scale to meet any level of complexity that your business demands.

Try Zendesk for free today.