Automation is everywhere right now. AI chatbots, self-service portals, workflow tools, every business seems to be investing in them with the same goal: reduce costs and improve customer experience.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth. A lot of automation isn’t actually working.
- A reported 68% of test automation projects are abandoned within 18 months due to maintenance issues
- Research from Bain and Company shows that only 5% of companies successfully scale automation across their operations
We’ve all experienced it, going round in circles with a chatbot, getting stuck in a clunky online journey, and eventually giving up and calling a human anyway. At that point, the business hasn’t reduced cost at all. In fact, it’s probably increased it.
So the question isn’t whether you can automate your services anymore. It’s knowing when it actually makes sense to.
The starting point is simpler than most organisations would like to admit: is your current service actually any good?
If it isn’t, if it’s slow, inconsistent, or relies too heavily on workarounds, automation won’t fix it. It will just scale those problems. And once they’re baked into a system, they’re much harder (and more expensive) to undo.
This is where many automation programmes go wrong. There’s a rush to implement technology before properly understanding or improving the underlying process. But if you automate too early, all you’re really doing is locking in an average, or even poor, experience and delivering it faster.
The businesses getting this right tend to take a step back first. They look at how their services actually work day-to-day. Where are the delays? Where do things break down? What are customers struggling with? Only once those issues are addressed does automation start to add real value. And even then, it’s not a given.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that automation automatically leads to cost savings. It doesn’t, at least not on its own. It only works if customers actually use it.
If people find your automated service confusing or frustrating, they won’t stick with it. They’ll find another route, usually the most expensive one, like calling your team directly. Suddenly, you’ve got the cost of the technology and the cost of manual intervention.
That’s why the most effective automation strategies start with customer behaviour, not internal cost targets. What are customers trying to do? How do they prefer to interact? Where can automation genuinely make things quicker or easier for them?
Sometimes the answer is: not everywhere.
There’s still a tendency to think that more automation is always better, but that’s rarely true. Some interactions benefit from a human touch, especially where there’s complexity, emotion or high value involved. In those cases, a fully automated experience can actually damage your brand rather than improve it.
In reality, the sweet spot for most organisations is somewhere in the middle. Automation handles the simple, repeatable tasks efficiently, while people focus on the interactions that really matter.
Before making any big investment, it’s worth pausing and asking a few honest questions. Not just about what the technology can do, but whether it should be doing it in your business.
- Does it align with your brand?
- Will your customers actually adopt it?
- And most importantly, can you clearly demonstrate the return on investment?
Because automation isn’t cheap, and getting it wrong is even more expensive.
The businesses seeing the biggest gains from automation right now aren’t the ones moving fastest. They’re the ones being more deliberate. Fixing their foundations first. Testing properly. Making decisions based on evidence, not assumptions.
Done well, automation can absolutely reduce costs and improve customer experience at the same time. But timing is everything. Get that wrong, and you’re not simplifying your business, you’re just scaling the problem.
