Automate New Customer Onboarding with RPA – 12 Use Cases for 2024

Onboarding new customers efficiently is critical for any business. But manual processes often lead to delays, errors and a poor client experience. This is where robotic process automation (RPA) comes in. RPA allows you to automate repetitive onboarding tasks, freeing up staff to focus on value-added activities.

In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the top 12 use cases of RPA bots for streamlining new customer onboarding in 2024. For each use case, we will look at real-world examples and benefits supported by research data. Let‘s get started!

What is RPA and How Can It Transform Onboarding?

Before diving into the specific use cases, let‘s briefly recap what RPA is and how it can overhaul onboarding.

RPA refers to software "robots" that automate repetitive, rules-based digital tasks end-to-end. RPA bots log into applications, enter data, move files, fill forms, extract information and execute workflows just like humans do. But they do it faster, non-stop and without errors.

For new customer onboarding, RPA can help automate tedious steps like filling forms, validating information, generating contracts, updating systems and more.

This provides the following benefits:

• Cost reduction: Automating manual work cuts labor costs substantially. As per Deloitte, RPA yields cost savings of 25-50% for onboarding processes.
• Speed: Bots work 24/7 at rapid speeds. McKinsey states RPA can deliver 50-70% faster onboarding turnaround times.
• Accuracy: RPA eliminates human errors in onboarding data entry and processing. Blue Prism notes this boosts onboarding accuracy to 99%.
• Compliance: RPA ensures correct processes and forms are followed consistently for compliance.
• Productivity: Automating repetitive onboarding tasks lets staff focus on high-value relationship building with new customers.
• Experience: Smoother, faster onboarding improves customer satisfaction. Forrester finds 74% of firms see large increases in customer experience metrics after RPA adoption.

Clearly, RPA can drive tremendous benefits for new customer onboarding across industries. Now let‘s explore 12 specific use cases with examples.

12 Ways To Use RPA for Onboarding

1. Automated KYC Verification

Know your customer (KYC) verification is essential for onboarding customers in regulated industries like banking, insurance and cryptocurrency. However, manual verification often takes days to weeks.

RPA bots can seamlessly extract customer data from forms and documents, cross-check information across databases, and validate identities in minutes.

For instance, Element AI developed an AI-enabled RPA solution that reduces KYC verification time from 36 hours to under 10 minutes per customer for one global bank. This drastically accelerates onboarding.

Table: RPA impact on KYC processing time and cost

As the above table summarizes, RPA cuts KYC cost by 80-90% while making the process near-instant. This removes a major onboarding bottleneck.

2. Auto-Populating Contract Templates

Generating customized contracts for each new client involves tedious rekeying of information into contract templates. RPA eliminates manual efforts through automated data integration.

RPA robots can pull relevant client data from documents and forms, integrate it into pre-approved templates, and load completed contracts into e-signature tools. This shrinks contract turnaround times from days to just minutes.

Leading telecom Ooredoo leverages RPA to generate 5 million mobile contracts annually in Algeria by extracting data from their site to create contracts instantly.

Such auto-contracting accelerates deal closure and revenue realization during the new customer acquisition process.

3. Automated Onboarding Communication

Keeping new users informed is vital for onboarding satisfaction. RPA bots can instantly trigger personalized welcome emails, FAQs, tutorials and onboarding checklists to streamline communication.

Bots can also handle common onboarding queries through automated chat windows on the website or within apps. This provides new customers instant self-service access to information instead of waiting for a human agent.

According to Gartner, chatbots now handle ~80% of routine customer service queries across industries, enabling agents to focus on complex issues. The same approach applies for onboarding.

4. Intelligent Cross-selling and Upselling

RPA allows you to capture each customer‘s website activity data and funnel it into ML algorithms to determine optimal cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

The algorithms analyze visitor clicks, pages visited and items viewed to develop individualised product recommendations. RPA bots then action theserecommendations via personalized emails, pop-up offers, and by auto-populating relevant fields in forms.

For example, an insurance company uses this RPA-enabled approach to increase policy conversion rates by over 25%, as per Everest Group.

5. Seamlessly Updating CRM and Backend Systems

Inputting new customer data across the CRM, ERP, support desk and other systems is time-consuming yet crucial. RPA bots can extract data from forms and docs and automatically update all relevant systems in one go.

This builds a complete customer record across your technology stack right from day one without any manual efforts. It also ensures different teams have timely access to accurate customer data.

Mulesoft reports how a leading bank used RPA to reduce new customer data transfer costs by ~80%. Such backend integration accelerates onboarding and downstream processes.

6. Real-Time Onboarding Status Tracking

Collaboration between sales, service, finance and other teams is vital during onboarding. RPA software enables you to build bots that provide automated, real-time status updates at each onboarding stage.

For instance, the sales rep can get notifications when the contract is signed, payment is received, account is provisioned and so on. This end-to-end visibility results in smoother, faster onboarding.

According to McKinsey, organizations that leverage RPA for onboarding improve new customer speed by over 50% and accuracy by 40%.

7. AI-Powered Chatbots for 24/7 Customer Support

New users often need instant answers to queries on setup, account access or product usage. AI-enabled chatbots powered by RPA and NLP can provide personalized support 24/7.

The bots pull data from knowledge bases to resolve frequently asked questions on the spot. They can also intelligently understand context and engage in conversations. Any complex queries get routed to human agents.

As per Salesforce, chatbots now resolve 70% of customer service requests compared to just 10% in 2017, drastically reducing call volumes. The same automation can be applied for onboarding assistance.

8. Automated Onboarding Reporting

Generating daily or weekly reports on new customer acquisitions is essential but time-consuming. RPA bots can pull data from source systems and auto-create standardized reports.

These may cover number of customers onboarded, contract acceptance rates, onboarding times, payments completed, and more. Automated dashboards give you real-time visibility into onboarding health.

Leading financial institutions use RPA to reduce reporting costs by 40-60%, as per Institute for Robotic Process Automation. This frees up analyst time significantly.

9. Analytics for Onboarding Optimization

RPA creates complete logs of every process robots execute, including details like systems accessed, data extracted, and process finish times.

Analyzing these RPA logs helps uncover inefficiencies in your onboarding processes like delays between steps or hand-off points. identifies bottlenecks.

These bottlenecks can then be addressed through process optimization initiatives. As per Pega, leading firms use RPA analytics to improve onboarding efficiency by over 20% year-over-year.

10. Segmented Onboarding Workflows

Grouping customers into segments allows you to provide tailored onboarding experiences. For instance, high value customers may get concierge onboarding.

RPA bots can analyze details like deal size and customer lifetime value to automatically assign appropriate segments. Customized onboarding workflows can then be triggered for each segment.

McKinsey reports how personalized onboarding workflows enabled by RPA improve new customer conversion rates by 10-15%.

11. Personalized Automated Nurturing

Tracking prospect website activity gives insights into their needs. RPA software can monitor pages visited and trigger automated, personalized emails to nurture prospects.

For example, if someone visits the billing page multiple times, the bot can email them recommendations on payment options. This proactive outreach is more effective than generic blasts.

As per Aberdeen Group, 74% of top performers use RPA-enabled customer nurturing. This leads to 38% higher conversions compared to companies that don‘t nurture customers.

12. End-to-End Issue Tracking

RPA robots finally enable you to automatically log all customer issues during onboarding in one place. This ensures no requests fall through cracks.

Bots can be configured to automatically check for pending issues and notify customers of resolution status via emails or chatbots. This closed loop approach enhances satisfaction.

According to SimplerRPA, top banks using RPA improve issue resolution rates by 60% and cut resolution times by 40%.

The Bottom Line

In summary, RPA can drive tremendous value throughout the new customer onboarding process in diverse ways. The use cases outlined, from KYC to contracts to analytics and more, highlight the massive potential of RPA.

By automating repetitive onboarding workflows, RPA enables your staff to focus exclusively on delivering personalized experiences. This is key to customer retention and growth.

RPA also equips you with unprecedented visibility into your onboarding operations through detailed audits and analytics. These insights can be leveraged to continuously refine and enhance onboarding.

The numbers speak for themselves – ROI of 30-200% in year one, 50% faster onboarding, 80% cost reduction, 10-15% higher customer conversions. It‘s time to jump on the RPA train and transform new customer onboarding!