Where Not to Automate: Things That Still Need a Human Touch
A confession from a business owner we will call Wanjiru. Last year, like plenty of firms trying business process automation in Kenya, she set up an automatic message for her Nairobi catering company. Every client who had not paid within seven days received a cheerful reminder with a smiley face and a payment link. Efficient. Modern. Then the system sent that same cheerful reminder, smiley face included, to a client whose father had passed away the week before. The event Wanjiru had catered was the funeral.
Nobody had told the system. Nobody could have. The system did exactly what it was told, and that was the problem.
We are big fans of automation. We think most Kenyan offices waste whole afternoons copying numbers from one place to another while the chai goes cold. But the end of the year is a good time to be honest about the other side: there are things a machine should not be doing, and pretending otherwise costs you clients, staff and sometimes your reputation.
Business process automation in Kenya: rules versus judgement
Automation is brilliant at anything that follows a clear rule. If X happens, do Y. If an invoice is approved, send it. If stock drops below twenty units, alert the storekeeper. The machine never gets tired, never forgets and never takes a long lunch because the matatu stage was chaotic.
It is terrible at anything that needs judgement, context or empathy. The moment a task requires someone to read the room, the robot should hand over to a human. A useful test is to ask: "Would I be embarrassed if this went wrong in front of the customer?" If yes, keep a person in the loop.
Things that still need a person
Bad news. Retrenchments, rejected applications, a failed medical claim, a delayed order for a wedding. Deliver these personally or at least have a human write and send them.
Complaints that are already angry. An auto-reply saying "Your feedback is important to us" to someone who is furious is pouring paraffin on a fire.
Negotiations. Discounts, payment plans for a struggling long-term client, salary discussions. These depend on relationships and history that no form captures.
Hiring decisions. Software can sort CVs by keywords, but it will happily reject a brilliant candidate who wrote "bookkeeping" instead of "accounting".
Anything involving grief, illness or family. If in doubt, a phone call wins.
The grey zone: automate the prep, not the conversation
Many tasks are half rule and half judgement. The trick is to let the machine do the boring half and give the human a head start on the interesting half.
Take debt collection. The system can list every overdue account, show the payment history and flag who usually pays late versus who has never missed a payment. That saves your credit officer, Otieno, two hours of digging. But Otieno still decides who gets a gentle call and who gets the firm letter. He knows that Mama Achieng's shop was closed for a month because of road works, and the spreadsheet does not.
The same goes for customer support. Let a system answer "What are your opening hours?" and "Where is my order?" all day long. The second a customer types something with the word "disappointed" in it, route it to a real person, and make sure that person has the full history in front of them.
Watch out for these warning signs
Sometimes automation creeps into places it should not go, slowly, one clever shortcut at a time. Keep an eye out for:
Customers replying to automated messages with "Is this a real person?"
Staff saying "The system did it" when something goes wrong, as though the system were a colleague who could be disciplined.
Nobody being able to explain why a decision was made.
The same apology being sent five times to the same unhappy client.
If you notice any of these, it is time to pull a process back and put a person in charge of it again. That is not failure. It is maintenance.
Building a kill switch
Every automated process that touches customers should have an easy way to pause it. Not a ticket to IT, not a request in the WhatsApp group that gets buried under a forwarded video of a goat, but a simple switch that the manager on duty can flip.
Wanjiru now has exactly that. Her team can mark a client account as "handle personally", and every automated reminder for that client stops until someone clears the flag. It took an afternoon to set up. It has saved her more than one awkward phone call.
Automation should give your people more time for the human bits, not remove the human bits altogether. Let the machines handle the counting. Keep the caring for yourselves.
Not sure which of your processes belong to the machines and which belong to your team? Talk to Philsoft and we will help you map them out, or browse our software and automation services first. We promise not to send you a smiley face reminder.