They could be used in your call center to ask simple questions and guide customers to appropriate teams, or you could be using them on your ecommerce website to help people find the products they are looking for. They are also widely used in the field of affiliate marketing.
These two examples can have enormous benefits; in a call center, they can reduce waiting times and make the customer experience a smoother one. However, they will not help in some scenarios, such as discovery calls, but you can program them to answer frequently asked questions, such as “What is sip number?”.
On ecommerce websites, they make the customer’s journey easier and can help improve your conversions and sales rates. For example, if a customer is looking for new VoIP phones, then a chatbot can eliminate some options and guide the customer to the best choices.
However, have you thought about using them within your HR process? Most people do not realize that chatbots can help your employees (on both sides of the HR fence) just as much as they help your customers? So, how can chatbots transform your HR process?
What is a chatbot?
Chatbots are computer programs that can hold conversations with people of varying complexities. They range from simple question and response programs to ones that utilize AI power and machine learning to learn and hold more complicated conversations. These programs allow people to interact in ways that mimic real conversations.
You will most often encounter chatbots in the form of pop-ups on websites. They will offer assistance in a variety of ways when needed. You will also find them being used on various apps, such as ride-hailing or food delivery apps, replacing the need for human interaction and freeing staff up to focus on other roles.
So, if chatbots can help with simple queries in the customer-facing part of your business, it makes sense that they can fulfill the same roles internally. They can complement the work done by your human HR agents and can save time just as they do with customers. With HR often being a busy and complicated department, utilizing chatbots can offer major benefits.
How to use chatbots in HR
It sounds simple enough and makes a lot of sense to use a chatbot for certain facets of your HR work. How does that translate into reality, though? You also need to consider that you may have many employees working remotely, so nipping down to HR for a chat is not always a viable option. You also need to consider that HR is a fluid and changing entity, and you need to keep up with how you adapt to changes.
We look at some of the best ways you can utilize chatbots to make your HR department’s job easier and more efficient.
1. Knowledge direction
Whether all office-based, remote, or hybrid, there will always be times when your employees need to access some basic HR information (for example, overtime policies). You likely have a knowledge base of some sort, and you are also probably offering omnichannel contact/support. That can sometimes be complicated, and even simple information can be lost in the “noise.”
Chatbots can act as guides through your omnichannel experience. Even a basic question and answer chatbot can point employees in the right direction to find any required info. This means they experience a smoother experience and can mean that your human HR staff doesn’t have to deal with relatively simple requests.
2. Onboarding
When you recruit new staff, there can be multiple hoops for them to jump through before beginning work. Paperwork, policies and regulations, training, and training manuals to complete and read. It can be a time-consuming process, not only for the new recruit but also for the HR agent tasked with ensuring the employee is successfully onboarded.
By automating the process through the use of chatbots, you make the process simpler for all concerned. The new employee can ask the most common questions and get quick answers or be pointed to where the info resides. You can also set up a simple step-by-step onboarding process that guides the employee through the various stages involved in onboarding with you.
3. Career development & training
Your HR department will usually have the responsibility of ensuring all employees follow a career development plan. This is not just about improving their skills as an employee but can also include new developments and processes that become part of their role. A good example is in the area of compliance and regulations that are crucial to your organization.
It is simple to set up a calendar to ensure that everyone meets any training requirements and to program chatbots to guide staff through the various steps and stages involved in any training. They can notify staff of training dates and times and can then take them through the actual training, including any related tests or quizzes. This can save your human staff a huge amount of time.
4. Recruiting
As with onboarding, the recruitment process can be time-consuming and complicated for your HR team. While chatbots may not (yet) carry out actual interviews, they can carry out some of the more tedious tasks in the early stages of recruitment. As with other chatbot roles, this can again relieve human agents of tasks that can take up much of their time.
With many applications now received virtually, a chatbot can gather CVs, sort through applications (and even reject some according to pre-set criteria), answer questions from applicants, and gather data from your current recruitment pool. With the right programming, they can help narrow down the field and present interviewers with a suitable shortlist.
5. Reduce pressure
If you are operating a remote or even hybrid model, then some of your teams, such as HR and IT, may occasionally be overloaded with questions. What tax do I pay? What holidays am I still due? Many of those questions are simple ones that can easily be dealt with by well-programmed chatbots. It doesn’t help that people may submit questions via multiple channels, and a backlog of queries can quickly build up via email, phone calls, and other channels.
Bringing chatbots into the equation can be a real game-changer when it comes to pressure on your teams. Chatbots can easily deal with the simpler queries as well as guide employees through any self-service options you offer. It means your HR staff can focus their attention on more complex queries that chatbots can’t deal with.
6. Spread information
As well as carrying out the usual HR duties regarding payroll, recruitment, and other tasks, your HR team may also act as the conduit between management and the workforce as a whole. That means they are often the route management will use to inform a workforce of new info or changes to any existing policies and procedures. HR can also be the lynchpin for mental health support for both office-based and remote workers.
While email may have been the traditional choice for sharing any such info, there was always a risk that an employee may miss an important update in the daily chat. By assigning chatbots with enabled push notifications to spread the info, it means your HR team can instantly communicate with all staff and be sure that the info has been received.
7. Track working hours
With an increase in businesses adopting remote and hybrid models, tracking the hours worked by an employee has become more complex. Gone are the days of Bob’s working time being automatically logged in-office, and organizations need to adapt to these changes with efficient ways of monitoring and recording.
By using chatbots in your HR team, you not only offer remote workers access to everything from training resources to key information but you also enhance the ability to track working hours and to improve task management. It’s simple to integrate time tracking options into your chatbot system so that you can ensure staff is working the required hours and that tasks and projects are completed on time.
The takeaway
Chatbots are an integral part of any digital transformation your business is considering, especially in scenarios where you have remote or hybrid workers. Many sectors are now implementing various personalized elements, such as chatbots or augmented reality shopping. Personalization is more than a buzzword; it’s a necessity for any business in the digital age.
They provide not only another communication channel but also an information channel that can help keep staff informed of any changes to how they should be working, just as their use enhances the best personalization websites so that they can improve how you deliver your HR services and how your employees access those services.
Businesses are constantly looking for ways to improve how they operate. That means examining every area of your organization and what those areas involve. From a non fixed VoIP lookup to adding chatbots to your HR processes, many of those improvements will revolve around communications. Making the change now can benefit your future.
Richard Conn - Senior Director, Demand Generation, 8x8
Richard Conn is the Senior Director for Demand Generation at 8x8, a leading communication platform with integrated contact center, voice, video, call center dialer systems, and chat functionality. Richard is an analytical & results-driven digital marketing leader with a track record of achieving major ROI improvements in fast-paced, competitive B2B environments. Check out his LinkedIn. He also has written for CodeMotion and RightInbox.