An Attended Automation bot is one of the ‘flavors’ which an organization can adopt with an RPA solution. An attended bot is different from an unattended one, in a few ways: It is installed on the employee’s desktop, supporting them with their daily work activities, many times referred to as their personal robotic assistant; The attended bot typically delivers functions beyond just automation, namely guidance for employees through complex processes, popping up next-best-action recommendations to show them what they need to say or do in real-time; The attended bot will automate short, point tasks on the employee’s desktop, as the employee works on other tasks in parallel. Therefore it is more sophisticated in how it can work ‘side-by-side’ with the employee and not interfere with what the employee is doing, but rather provide added value and support; An attended bot can be triggered automatically by the employee’s desktop actions, or manually triggered by the employee. Automatic triggering by desktop actions delivers guidance/automation which is contextual and relevant to what the employee is currently working on or the type of conversation he is having with a customer.

Many large enterprises have already adopted RPA and are looking for additional ways to increase its impact across the enterprise. One place which can benefit greatly from RPA, and especially from attended automation, is the contact center, since a lot of the processes executed by the service representatives, are repetitive and error-prone, making them prime candidates for RPA.