What can an AI HR Chatbot do for you?
Wait, no. It can’t. Hmm, really? A chatbot in HR? Doesn’t HR mean HUMAN resources? There’s no way HR would use human-machines... Is there?
After all, HR is the core, the power, the centre and pulse of the company. Nope. There’s absolutely no place for replicating human processes here.
Well, what if I told you, of all the solutions we deliver, ubiHR is way up at the top of the most popular?
'Why HR!?' I hear you cry
Well, companies often find themselves having to 'build a boat at sea'. Things move quickly, and they are continuously growing, contracting, pivoting and adapting. They have to make changes having already set sail, and AI can help them do this.
We find HR is a real test-bed for innovation as it deals with ‘internal customers’, more commonly known as employees.
Why is HR at the centre of the AI revolution?
HR functions cover a diverse range, from pay and conditions, training, employee engagement, performance management, recruitment and benefits, to name a few. That’s a whole lot of questions being thrown at your HR team.
You see, there’s this thing call the Pareto principle, or 80/20 rule. In HR, it suggests that the majority of inbound communication is based on similar questions. Depending on the organisation, examples might be:
“What does this mean on my payslip?
“How much maternity allowance do I get?”
“How much leave do I have left?”
“Where is the documentation about our benefits package?”
“I need the interview template?”
“How do I deal with a bereavement in my team?”
Your HR chatbot can automatically take care of these questions, answering them correctly all day and night. It’s win-win. Your employees don’t have to wait three days for a response, and your HR team can do something, you know, human resource-y.
Your HR chatbot enables the 20% of the people who really need human help, perhaps with personal or critical queries, to meet with someone in HR who has the time to talk. The mundane has been made more efficient.
Should an employee have a question, rather than picking up the phone or emailing HR, they can just ask the chatbot. The chatbot is connected to and pulls the answers from any resource you give it access to, in real time. If for some reason the chatbot is unable to help, it can take details and forward the request to HR or arrange a call-back or meeting.
We work very closely with HR professionals in the development of specific and tailored solutions. The chatbots learn from previous conversations, user feedback, intranet and digital content etc.
Smart little cookies, huh?
What companies are using HR chatbots?
Companies that are dealing with lots of inbound communication to their HR team from employees. Typically it’s the larger companies with displaced workforces that operate multi-site. That being said, the earliest adopters are just companies that find HR is far too stretched.
A good example is a company we’re working with now; it has just eight frontline HR employees servicing a total of 6,500 employees. Their HR chatbot has taken away the burden of routine, often asked questions and saved up around 45% of their time.
Read this case study to see another example of our HR chatbot solution, this time with a large financial services company.
If you like, you can watch a demo with some examples:
Once successfully adding value, the HR chatbot use case tends to branch out to other business processes. The HR solution being the business case to prove ROI.
Handling your HR chatbot day-to-day
By now, you may wonder whether someone has to ‘(wo)man’ (see, HR-friendly around here!) your HR chatbot.
It depends on the use case. The majority of HR chatbots we have delivered include a ‘fall-back to human’ functionality. A user can request to speak to someone, and the chatbot facilitates the meeting or takes details for a callback. If you like, the HR team can also use your chatbot’s management suite to take over the conversation in real-time, live-chat style.
It can be as resource intensive as you need. We build a tool to work for you and make your team more efficient. The last thing we want it to do is to add to your already crazy workload.
Ok, I'm interested. How does it work?
You want to give an HR chatbot a try. How would it work, timelines, input from you and all that jazz?
Perhaps the reason why companies are looking at solving internal communication problems with a chatbot is that the implementation can be very lightweight and low-risk.
Typically, all you’d have to do is email us the information the chatbot should be able to converse on, things like the employee handbook and benefit documents, log in to the intranet (yes we sign a mutual NDA). We’ll then use this information to teach your chatbot how to become your best HR employee.
All you’d do then is add a snippet of code to your intranet, or admin area of a website, where you want the chatbot to live. We can work with your HR platform provider on your behalf, or you can deploy the solution to something like Slack or Skype for business.
Can HR chatbots deal with sensitive information?
And if yes, how?
Well, it depends on your use case, but generally, in one of two ways.
Either it never talks about personal stuff, and just points people to the correct information.
As an example, if a user asks about annual leave, the chatbot could send them the correct document or section of the intranet and highlight the bit they should read.
Or, it could connect to your HR management portal or internal systems and deliver an exact answer.
As an example, “Hi Clare, I can see you have 12 days leave left this year, don’t forget you can only carry 6 days over to next year.“.
A more personal example like this might use something like two-factor authentication to verify it’s the right employee. You know, like banks and other services use where you have to type in a pin code sent to your mobile phone.
OMG I need one right now
In that case, first of all, I should totally become a sales-writer, and secondly, click here to chat with one of our human-geeks.
ttfn!
