Employee Experience is the topmost priority for more than 50% of organizations.
– Forbes 2020 HR Sentiment Survey
While Employee Experience (EX) was not a new concept that emerged in 2020, the need for delivering an effective EX was expediated by the COVID-19 crisis and its resulting remote/hybrid working scenarios. In this era of social isolation, a large population of the workforce feels more stressed, disconnected, and disengaged than ever before. Consequently, Forbes predicts EX to be the next competitive frontier for organizations worldwide.
Organizations that take a shaping approach to employee experience are able to satisfy and empower 32% more employees than their counterparts and at a 32% lower cost.
– Gartner
The research firm further states: organizations operate at their optimum level when employees are empowered to put in their best efforts. EX enables employees to learn, grow, and do their best work. It helps employees feel supported and delivers the right knowledge at the right time. According to a Gallup survey, businesses that invest in building effective EX at all levels of the organization can outperform their peers by 147% in earnings.
Rewire Employee Experience with AI Chatbots
However, most business and technology leaders are still grappling with how to succeed with EX. AI Chatbots which have already proved their mettle in the customer service space is now making significant inroads into the world of work. Intelligent Chatbots with their Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities are enabling organizations to reimagine the employee-employer relationship by automating tasks that were earlier cumbersome and highly repetitive. Chatbots are transforming how employees interact and access the information needed to help increase their productivity and satisfaction. The more accessible, seamless, and personalized these interactions are, the better the experience for employees.
The beauty of AI Chatbots is that they can deliver much more than answering simple questions. A good Chatbot can automate repetitive tasks and workflows based on its understanding of the employee’s intent. According to research by ServiceNow, over 30% of employees today, expect a “Google-like” option to access the information they need at work. AI-powered chatbots are the perfect solution to meet such wishes of your employees. Some discernable benefits of AI Chatbots towards EX are:
- Enables organizations to establish a mechanism for prompt support of employee queries and provide self-service to employees 24/7.
- Allows more natural, frictionless interactions via conversations, with an option for human handover when needed. This is critical in deflecting simple requests to busy IT or HR staff and increases employee self-service rates.
- Engages with employees across multiple channels, wherever the employee is, whether it’s on SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, a website, a mobile app, or a voice assistant.
- Provides a single convenient point of access for all IT or HR self-help needs so that an employee can get all the help they need from a single access point.
- Handles multiple different use cases across all types of functions and can be proactive as well as reactive. This is a game-changer for employees that get frustrated trying to retrieve information from multiple portals and tools.
- Automates various EX-oriented HR tasks and workflows, reducing human involvement and costs.
- Reduces human errors and enables swift handling of employee requests. This helps organizations keep their employee gratified and engaged.
5 Ways Conversational AI is Transforming Employee Experience
Equipped with AI, ML, and NLP, Chatbots can answer basic employee queries, ensure quick resolutions for complex requests, help employees raise support tickets in real-time, and inject speed into various workflows. With push features, AI Chatbots strengthen internal communications by sending out announcements and notifications. It can also be used to send out training modules and updates to the employees’ inboxes. These conversational assistants can be leveraged for various use cases to transform EX.
1: Strengthens Recruitment
The cycle of EX initiates with the recruitment process and Chatbots help organizations create a great first impression. Most parts of the recruitment process rely on frequent employer-candidate communication across various channels – emails, text messages, social media, and even career sites. AI-enabled Chatbots can mimic human conversational abilities to interact with candidates and provide them with immediate feedback helping strengthen the employer-candidate relationship throughout the recruitment lifecycle. Chatbots also help screen and match candidates to their job profiles. In addition to candidate screening, assessment, and engagement, AI-powered Chatbots can also be a potent tool for diversity recruitment. When trained using appropriate data, chatbots eliminate human bias from the recruiting process.
2: Simplifies Employee Onboarding
Chatbots can ease the induction and onboarding processes of new employees. It can be deployed to gather necessary information from the recruit and automate essential onboarding processes, such as document submission, signing up for employee insurance, informing them of their upcoming schedule, and aligning them to company values. Chatbots can smartly transform the long and tiring onboarding process into a self-service task, thereby creating a great benchmark for EX. Moreover, they can automatically resolve all the policy-related and generic queries that new employees usually face.
3: Enables Continuous Skills Development
A recent LinkedIn report found that 94% of employees would stay at an organization longer if it invests in their learning and development. Employees want to be more competitive and seek more training for the same reason. However, when employees don’t get support from their employers they are quick to jump onto another ship. Chatbots can deliver highly personalized training while also helping employees upskill on the job. Also referred to as Virtual Coaches, Chatbots can design and massively impact employee development and that too in real-time. If and when employees come across a problem or have doubts with regards to something they’re working on, they can immediately text their virtual coach to get access to links and answers to the right training resources to help them improve.
4: Facilitates Real-Time Support Ticketing
While AI Chatbots can interact with employees and answer most of their queries instantly. It can also route complex requests to the concerned department. Whenever the chatbot faces complex issues, it enables employees to raise tickets that automatically get assigned to the right agent or department. Furthermore, Chatbots keep employees updated about their ticket status throughout the resolution process. Popular AI-driven Chatbots through their easy integration with popular support ticketing systems such as ServiceNow, ZenDesk, Freshservice, etc. make support ticketing simple and resolutions quick.
5: Streamlines HR Service Delivery
Let’s face it – complex processes, policies, and frameworks are an unpleasant but crucial part of the HR function. AI-powered chatbots can simplify HR operations by delivering notifications and alerts about company policies, incentives, upcoming holidays, vacation policies, and more. Chatbots provide quick and personalized responses to common process- or policy-related questions such as clarifications about PTO, employee benefits, and leave policies, etc. Chatbots can eliminate the need for needless paper forms and digitize them to ease HR service delivery while also ensuring a great EX.
It is quite evident that chatbots can significantly improve the EX. If you are seeking a Chatbot solution to alleviate your Employee Experience, look no further.
Transform Employee Experience with AgreeYa Chatbot
AgreeYa’s AI-powered Chatbot, built on Azure AI, delivers an intelligent self-service helpdesk for any time (24×7), anywhere (web/desktop/mobile), and instant support. It enables organizations to do away with cumbersome processes while also providing a repertoire of information to employees whenever and wherever they might need it. The AgreeYa Chatbot leverages AI and ML to improve the experience of employees as they go through the recruitment process, interact with human resources, continue to improve their skillset through learning initiatives, and provides optimized support ticketing to ensure optimum employee efficiency at the workplace. Please feel free to get in touch with us for further information on this topic.