Automotive
Challenges
With operations in over 60 countries, a leading Fortune 500 automotive and engineering company operated a complex customer support network across Europe. Its Barcelona hub, supporting a wide range of aftersales and service interactions, was selected for a focused improvement initiative in collaboration with regional leadership. The team aimed to address persistent inefficiencies that were impacting productivity and service quality. The key challenges included:
Inconsistent processes and unclear handoffs
Delays and rework due to execution gaps
Lack of visibility into workflow variants to drive improvement
Teams
Customer Support
Location
Barcelona
Key runtime metrics
Effort per Order, Effort Disparity
Enter
The AI model revealed insights into the actual processes driving the work.
Scout Insights
Process inefficiencies
47% time was lost yearly to manual tasks- pointing to system gaps and lack of automation.
Operational bottlenecks
30% of orders got rescheduled, with most of them due to service technicians unavailability, causing delays.
Effort disparity
1.3x variance in order creation and 2.5x in scheduling among user groups highlighted process inconsistencies.
Multi touch orders
36% of orders required multiple touches, driving a 20% increase in average effort per order.
Runtime metrics
The graphs below reveal fluctuating effort per order and effort disparity, reflecting the impact of unclear handoffs and recurring rework. Without standardized execution, similar requests required varying levels of manual effort across team members — leading to inconsistent throughput and uneven workload distribution.
Recommendations
Self service portal & chatbot
Introduce a self service portal & chatbot to handle common inquiries, reducing effort and enhancing customer experience.
Automate call scripting & logging
Use speech-to-text to take notes during calls and auto-save them to systems to reduce handoff errors and improve visibility on key details.
RPA bot for email order creation
Use a structured request form and RPA bot to extract details and create orders in downstream systems to avoid delays and rework.
Standardize Workflows
Standardize note-taking templates, search guides and call scripts to reduce effort variation and improve efficiency across users.
Strategic Payoff
Scout identified a ~47% potential for manual effort reduction, and an additional ~29% throughput boost through targeted automation and user training, significantly reducing effort per order and effort disparity.
