8 Ways You Can Use Chatbots to Boost Employee Experience
Happy employees work harder (source).
They’re also more likely to stay at your business, reducing the amount of talent scouting that’s required.
So, creating a high quality employee experience is vital.
But, not every business can afford to throw huge amounts of resources into perk and rewards schemes. This is where chatbots come in. Chatbots help increase efficiency (business-wide) while improving the employee experience. It’s a two birds one stone situation that many businesses are already taking advantage of.
Here we discuss how you can use a chatbot platform to enhance your workplace experience and provide employees with the tools they need to excel.
1. Help HR better care for your business
HR departments are the backbone of any organisation. They are there for each and every employee, rain or shine. Being there for every employee often leaves HR departments swamped in enquiries. After creating a chatbot with our platform, clients have seen a huge drop in HR inbox traffic (43% to be precise).
This is a clear boost to any HR department, allowing them to spend their time on high-value activities instead of answering the same old FAQs. But it’s not just a boost for the HR department, its impact ripples across the entire workforce.
HR reps can spend longer on activities that require a human touch, such as personal or complex queries. This improves the level of care employees receive and works wonders to making them feel valued.
In a world where employees leave jobs when they don’t feel listened to or appreciated (source), the service your HR department provides matters.
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2. Automate the mundane.
The days where I would spend hours copy-pasting SEO advice has stayed with me. Why? Because no one likes boring, repetitive tasks. Copy-pasting answers, fetching the same file from the same folder, taking details to pass a message on, these are the jobs that grind staff down.
When I was copy-pasting my days away, if I had access to a chatbot platform I could have automated 70% of the process. Even now, it’s frustrating to think about how much time I effectively just wasted.
While answering FAQs and gathering information is 100% necessary for any business to function, employees don’t need to be wasting their time doing it. Chatbots deal with the mundane tasks, allowing employees to focus their attention on the jobs that really matter.
To put it simply, let robots do the boring stuff and employees do the good stuff.
3. A more beneficial way to invest in your staff.
We’ve all seen the photos of the Google offices with ball pits and free lunches. While that environment isn’t for every business, we can learn from the idea behind it.
Employees work harder when they feel invested in. So, invest in the right solutions
Chatbots aren’t solely there to improve the lives of employees. They are there to reduce support tickets, book meeting rooms, qualify leads etc. But while doing this, they improve the lives of your staff.
Processes become streamlined, boring jobs are automated and targets are made easier to achieve. Chatbots are the only solution that benefits both the business and the employees.
4. Make your business fully accessible.
No matter the department, there will always be a time when employees need a quick answer. With a chatbot, these answers become instant (even out of working hours).
Line manager looking for the policy on absences? Recruiter trying to pull together a shortlist of qualified job applicants ? A team struggling to find a free meeting room? Sales rep need product info? A chatbot instantly provides your staff with the information they need (and doesn't waste the time of their colleagues while looking for it).
When it takes close to 30 minutes to regain productivity after being distracted (source), it’s important employees aren’t wasting time looking for information that could be at their fingertips.
From basic admin tasks to more complex jobs, chatbots make everything at your business accessible.
5. Create a first line of defence.
Chatbots are your first line of defence, both internally and externally (our chatbot platform allows you to implement internal and external facing chatbots, or both). They deal with the initial set of enquiries, preventing employees from feeling they’re constantly in the firing line.
With 46% of businesses saying employee burnout causes up to half of their staff turnover (source), it’s vital you do everything you can to reduce burnout. Burnout is often caused by stress and feeling under appreciated, both outcomes of being left in the firing line for too long.
Using a chatbot platform to create a flexible first line of defence takes your employees out of the firing line.
Better tools in place to support employees = better employee experience.
6. Identify ‘hidden’ pain points.
It can be difficult to identify and action employee pain points. Often, employees won’t mention a small irritant or even a larger problem to their line manager. Over time, these impact both productivity and the employee experience.
Interactions with your chatbot are anonymously tracked, allowing you to analyse the data and identify pain points. Small blocker slowing down daily tasks? It probably won’t be mentioned to a manager but you’ll be able to pick up on it using your chatbot’s CMS.
This also allows you to identify and action arising issues before they become a large scale problem. We like to refer to it as opening up a ‘check and address’ process for any business.
Have you spotted a jump in staff asking how to access the company portal? You can check if this is a technical bug and, if it is, address it before the complaints flood in.
7. Offer skills development.
No one likes to feel like they’re stagnating. With 87% of millennials stating that personal development is important when looking for a new role (source), your business needs to find ways to offer new skills training.
Chatbot platforms fill this requirement in two ways. Firstly, you can tailor a chatbot to be able to answer any learning and development questions, enrol employees into new courses, and gather feedback.
Secondly, you will need to spend a short period of time training existing employees on how to use your chatbot platform. This offers an excellent opportunity for employees to expand their skillset, without having to take large amounts of time away from their current responsibilities.
As chatbot technology has proven it’s here to stay (source), many employees will enjoy the opportunity to add experience working with a chatbot platform to their resume.
Learning and development a focus point for your business? Create a dedicated chatbot to answer any employee questions about the opportunities on offer. Get us to show you how.
A final bonus point
With the right chatbot platform, you can create chatbots to tackle pretty much any challenge. There’s no hunt for the right chatbot to match your exact requirements, you tailor your solution to do exactly what you need it to do.
Qualifying leads getting in the way of employees closing sales? Get your chatbot to do it.
Your marketing department need clearer customer personas? A customer-facing chatbot helps gather the information they need.
Expense reports taking up too much time? A chatbot can do that for you.
Having the power to tailor solutions to fit your exact needs ensures you solve the problem and cuts out any irritants your employees face while doing so.
As chatbot platforms come with hundreds of use cases, we recommend speaking to an industry specialist to find the perfect one for you.
