Banking on Robots to Boost Service  

From call centers to credit card applications, robots are running the show at Indonesia’s Bank Mega. With COVID-19 affecting operations, automation is now key to maintaining high service levels. 

As part of the bank’s organization-wide transformation project, it automated several functions—a move that gained greater urgency during the global pandemic to ensure seamless service for customers.

Beyond business continuity plans, the aim of automation is also to minimize errors, and boost cost-efficiency and compliance—critical for any organization’s success.  

To drive these changes, the bank partnered with UiPath in 2018 to adopt robotic process automation (RPA), where robots perform manual tasks quickly and efficiently. 

Automation improves call center efficiency     

Bank Mega’s goal was simple: automate processes that were tedious and prone to human error to enhance its service. 

Agents who had to deal with 135,000 calls a month used to take up to seven minutes per call. This included product and services information enquiries, requests and complaints. 

With RPA, the completion of service requests such as data maintenance, upgrading credit limit and changing of emails take a maximum of five minutes, down from six to 24 hours. 

“By implementing this, we can reduce (supporting staff) and make the process faster,” said Yoyo Juhartoyo, the bank’s IT Electronic Channel Head. “But it’s still (a work) in progress because, as you know, the bank has many cases and requests.” 

Tech enhancements behind the scenes   

Bank Mega received crucial support from its RPA implementation partner IDstar. It advised them on the manual processes that should be automated first, according to the level of difficulty. The collaboration has resulted in automating more than 30 processes in the back office. 

Among these is reconciliation, an important process that compares two reports to check if they tally. This used to take up to six hours, said Juhartoyo. But with RPA, the check can be done almost immediately.  

Using robots to do repetitive tasks such as identification, validation, and regulation checks for credit card applications also helps to achieve greater compliance as there will be consistent standards across the board.  

This consistency comes with greater speed too. A customer verification check (BI Checking, scoring, etc) that used to take three to four hours can now be completed within five minutes with RPA. 

Contactless service amid the pandemic 

COVID-19 has intensified Bank Mega’s digitalization efforts, accelerating the pace of automation with more services moving online.  

The plan now is to fully tap on RPA to automate merchant on-boarding processes, offering online and offline services that previously required human interaction. One example is the creation of electronic forms for new merchants who sign up with the bank. This is not only more convenient, but also alleviates fears of catching the virus through human contact.  

But as with all digital transformation, change management is a major challenge. For instance, employees expressed concerns about losing their jobs following the shift to RPA, noted Juhartoyo. 

We explained that our goal is top service,” he added. “It’s not about removing the number of humans, but if we’re still using humans to handle certain processes, we cannot achieve world-class service level.

Yoyo Juhartoyo IT Electronic Channel Head, Bank Mega

RPA: Easy to learn and use  

With an eye on the future, Bank Mega has earmarked 200 other processes for automation, including its monitoring system where a robot will alert the IT department as soon as a problem occurs.  

If the mobile banking application is down, for instance, the RPA will be able to automatically reboot the system without requiring someone onsite to do it manually. 

Apart from automation, one key benefit about RPA is its lack of learning barriers. New employees are able to utilize UiPath’s platforms without difficulty. 

The tools have drag and drop functions and allow users to design automation processes in a visual manner. This makes them easy to use, even for people without prior programming knowledge. 

Juhartoyo cited as an example the experience of eight management trainees who joined in the midst of the pandemic in April.

When they came, they didn’t know about the technology. But after three to four days of training, two of them could create (their own bots) using RPA.

Yoyo Juhartoyo IT Electronic Channel Head, Bank Mega

Their success has prompted Juhartoyo to make RPA training compulsory for all new hires in the IT department. 

“That’s the standard we will use in the future. I’m not looking for someone with IT knowledge because RPA has already answered that question,” he said. “If management trainees need only two weeks to learn, everybody in IT can do automation by themselves.” 

If management trainees need only two weeks to learn, everybody in IT can do automation by themselves.

Yoyo Juhartoyo IT Electronic Channel Head, Bank Mega

BY THE NUMBERS

• 1 Minute needed for a robot to complete each call center process

• 1087 Man hours saved by RPA in the call centre each month

• > 200 Processes to be automated in the future

• **98%** Increase in speed of customer regulation checks due to RPA