Workflow
What is a workflow in customer contact and what should and shouldn't it automate?
A workflow is a sequence of steps that runs by itself once something happens. The skill is choosing which steps deserve it.
In short
A workflow is a defined sequence of steps carried out automatically once a certain event occurs: a message arrives, a status changes, a deadline passes. Every workflow has three parts: a trigger that starts it, conditions that decide whether it continues, and actions that get carried out. It differs from an AI agent in that the outcome is fixed.
Calculation
Workflow = trigger + conditions + actions
The conditions are the part that gets skipped and the part where it goes wrong. A workflow without conditions also runs on the cases it wasn't meant for, and you find out when a customer gets a message that makes no sense.
What deserves a workflow?
The test isn't whether something can be automated, but whether it pays. Building and maintaining a workflow costs time, and one that runs once a month never earns that back. Multiply frequency by the time the action costs now; anything below that you keep doing by hand.
The second test is whether the outcome is fixed. A sequence where someone has to judge midway what the right next step is isn't a workflow but a task with a checklist. Confusing the two produces automation that handles half the cases wrong.
- Fixed actions on an event
- A return that's approved, after which the label is sent and the customer is messaged. The steps are the same every time.
- Time-based monitoring
- A ticket waiting three days on a customer that gets a reminder, or an SLA about to expire that alerts someone. This is the kind of work people structurally forget.
- Routing and labelling on arrival
- Determining topic, setting urgency, sending to the right queue. Every second this saves is multiplied by your volume.
- Fetching data before anyone looks
- Attaching the order, the tracking status and the customer history before the agent opens the conversation.
Why after a year nobody dares touch the workflows
They stack. One gets added for an exception, and later another for an exception to that exception. After a year twenty are running, nobody knows which fires when, and nobody dares switch one off because it's unclear what would stop.
Two habits prevent that. Record with every workflow why it exists and who requested it, and walk the list every six months for what hasn't fired. A workflow that hasn't started in three months describes a situation that no longer occurs.
What automation doesn't deliver
Automating a bad process yields the same bad process, only faster and on more customers at once. If your current returns handling sends confusing messages, the automated version does that more often and more consistently.
So first walk the steps by hand and cut what's unnecessary before you build. In practice about a third of the steps often disappear, and that's a gain you get without any technology at all.
Workflow or AI agent?
| Workflow | AI agent | |
|---|---|---|
| Outcome | Fixed, the same every time | Determined per case |
| Good at | Actions with a fixed sequence | Questions in the customer's own words |
| On an unforeseen case | Continues or stops, both wrong | Still tries, and can be wrong |
| Testable beforehand | Yes, you can walk through it | Only with examples and sampling |
Let the model understand the question and the workflow carry out the action. A customer announcing a return in their own words is recognised by the agent; what happens next should be a fixed sequence of steps with no room for variation.
Where it goes wrong
Sending automatic messages without exceptions
A workflow emailing on every status change also messages the customer who just agreed something different by phone. Always put a condition on recent contact.
No log of what fired
Without being able to see which workflow ran when, a wrong message to a customer can't be traced and therefore can't be fixed.
Two workflows triggering each other
A workflow setting a status that starts a second workflow that resets the first status is a loop you only notice in your send log. Test every new workflow against the existing ones.
Building for a case that occurred twice
The maintenance stays, the frequency doesn't. Keep a lower bound and handle what falls below it by hand.
Building a workflow that keeps working
Walk the process by hand first
Write down every step and cut what doesn't matter. What remains is what you build.
Write the conditions before the actions
When must it not run? Recent phone contact, an open complaint, a manually set status. That list prevents most incidents.
First let it log without sending
A week of observation shows how many cases it fires on, and that number nearly always surprises.
Record why it exists
One line and a name. That's the difference between a list you can clean up and a list nobody dares touch.
Every six months, check what no longer fires
Zero runs in three months means the situation no longer exists. Switch it off.
What to do this week
Take the action your team performs most often after a conversation and count how many clicks and screens it costs. Multiply that by how often it happens per month. If that comes to more than a couple of hours, that's your first workflow. Walk the steps by hand first and see which ones you can cut before building anything.
What this looks like in a system
In Cuego a workflow consists of a trigger, conditions and actions, and can start on an incoming message, a status change, an elapsed deadline or a choice the customer makes in a conversation. Actions range from sending a message and creating a task to registering a return or updating a field in a connected system. Every run can be traced back to when it ran and why, and the AI agent can start a workflow once it has recognised the question.
Cuego AIRelated terms
AI agent
An AI agent understands a question in plain language, looks up information in your systems and carries out the action behind it. That's something other than a chatbot with choice buttons.
Read onTask management
A task is the work left over after you've answered the customer. That work usually sits in someone's head, and there it's invisible.
Read onTicket routing
Ticket routing determines which question lands with which agent. Set up poorly, it costs you the first twenty minutes of every morning.
Read on