Jagan Jami, Author at BotCore

6 Top CIO Priorities For 2021

Jagan Jami — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 09:03:00 +0000

6 Top CIO Priorities For 2021

In 2020, CIOs and other IT leaders have solved several unprecedented challenges and became key enablers in business continuity. CIOs are now in a dilemma regarding the orientation of their efforts and resources in 2021. While building resilience is still a priority, it’s time to plan for recovery post pandemic.

As millions of workers shifted to the remote setup, and customers moved online, businesses leveraged digital technologies to augment customer and employee experiences.

In a Harvey Nash/KPMG 2020 CIO survey, which polled 4,200 IT leaders, 61% of CIOs say they feel more influential than ever before, courtesy of their work to help hedge their businesses against the coronavirus.

However, rapid digital acceleration and adoption of cloud and other technologies have also brought many pressing issues to the forefront – the most significant one being the management of an increasingly complex IT infrastructure.

In a survey conducted among 1000 IT leaders, 63% reported technology management had become more difficult.

Yet, leaders globally have accepted the importance of technology as a business growth accelerator and will continue to work upon that in 2021 – even with tightened budget restrictions.

Let’s explore the top CIO priorities in 2021.

Top CIO Priorities For 2021

1. Low-code development

The onset of the coronavirus pandemic put immense pressure on the IT department to quickly develop new business apps to meet changing organizational needs. Faced with a massive resource crunch, many IT leaders implemented Low-code Application Platforms (LCAP) to enable business functions to develop and deploy custom apps quickly, and by themselves – with little to no reliance on IT. These platforms don’t require users to have prior coding experience.

Low-code platforms empower pro and citizen developers alike to build apps seamlessly, using canvas and model-based scenarios and automated testing. With LCAPs, CIOs can save costs in the long run, as –

Less coding means more apps can be developed in a shorter period of time
With low-code requirements, basic and quick apps, can be developed by less experienced employees, while professional developers can create complex solutions – but in much less time and cost.

As companies continue to focus on agility in operations and make their way to recovery in 2021, implementing low-code platforms like Microsoft PowerApps will be a top CIO priority in 2021.

Learn More: How Low-Code Application Platforms Are Driving Agility In the New Normal

2. Getting To The Next Phase of Chatbot Maturity

AI-enabled chatbots and virtual assistants gained widespread popularity in 2020.

To reduce wait-time and provide support at scale at lower costs, leaders implemented AI bots that leveraged natural language processing to hold human-like conversations with customers and employees and resolve queries quickly.

We have seen companies implement multiple employee-facing chatbots for a variety of use cases – There is a chatbot for HR support, another chatbot for IT issues, one more bot to let employees access information from LoB systems.

In 2021, we will see CIOs unifying all these individualized bots into a single aggregator bot or an intelligent employee assistant to provide a consistent user experience and reduce maintenance costs.

Similarly many customer-facing chatbots that were deployed during the pandemic focused solely on delivering support and quick information. In 2021, as recovery and bottomline becomes critical, leaders will focus on building brand loyalty, driving retention and generating revenue through chatbots. Chatbot use cases will be expanded to upselling, cross-selling, providing personalized recommendations and user experiences.

As such, capabilities like conversational analytics, sentiment analysis, and omnichannel engagement will become critical.

3. Enabling The Return to workplace

Another critical area that CIOs will prioritize is preparing their organization for a hybrid workplace setup in 2021. This will include investing in the right technology needed for a safe and smooth transition back to the workplace while also ensuring the availability of better collaboration tools, resources, and training essential to function remotely for an effective hybrid model.

Leaders must strike a delicate balance between resuming standard operations and managing the realities of the post-COVID era, including redesigning workplaces and redefining workflows to keep employees safe, productive, and aligned.

Autonomous digital workplace platforms and low-code return-to-workplace apps are a few solutions CIOs can consider.

Learn More: Getting Ready for the Hybrid Workplace: The New Normal of Work

4. AIOps

Owing to the pandemic, organizations around the world adopted digital transformations at an accelerated pace to be able to function in a remote setup and build agility and resilience in their operations.

However, as the number of apps, servers, and systems grew, it gave rise to an increasingly complex IT infrastructure, which can no longer be managed and protected by traditional performance monitoring systems and human agents. Even a single IT outage could cripple business operations and cost millions of rupees in revenue. As seen above, more than 60% of IT leaders felt technology management had become more difficult.

That’s where AIOps came into the picture. Artificial Intelligence for IT operations, also known as AIOps, leverages machine learning, big data, and analytics, analyzing heaps of IT data generated, diagnosing issues in real-time, improving application performance and uptime by predicting future outages, and reducing operations and maintenance expenditure.

Therefore, as businesses continue to operate in a highly dynamic and componentized IT landscape, the adoption and implementation of AIOps for IT operations management and cybersecurity will be a major CIO priority in 2021.

5. Reducing silos and streamlining the technology landscape

COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation journeys and increased adoption of various AI and remote working technologies. While these initiatives did ensure business survival in 2020, they are now posing a new challenge – increased technological silos. In 2020, companies rushed into digital transformation – but with no solid strategy. We have seen the implementation of various siloed remote working apps, custom mobile apps, and several function-specific systems that have individualized use cases and served for one-off purposes.

Now is the time for CIOs to unify all these apps together with a Digital Experience Platform (DEX) and reduce silos. A DXP acts as a centralized digital platform which offers flexible app integrations and easy extensions for emerging business needs.

6. IT as an enabler of business growth

The drastic shift in consumer and employee habits has completely transformed the expectations from IT. For CIOs, the opportunities expand beyond routine – building digital capabilities and getting new tools and systems for the organization.

Instead, the expectation is to enhance core capabilities and align outcomes to key business goals. For example, say you are working to increase revenue by 10% through digital commerce. Everything you do, including your people, technologies, and processes, must then tie back to this goal in an outcome-driven environment.

Thus, reinforcing the role IT plays as a strategic enabler of business growth will be a top CIO priority in 2021.

Final Thoughts

As digital transformations have led the way for change in 2020, the role of CIOs has come to the forefront. They have not only ensured that businesses transition smoothly to a remote setup, but have also integrated operational continuity as a critical element in their overall IT strategy.

CIOs have been given buy-in from every level of the organization. In 2021, as the role of IT into a driver of business growth, there is an enormous opportunity for CIOs to transform and future-proof their businesses for a new normal.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our customer service transformation experts for a personalized consultation.

The post 6 Top CIO Priorities For 2021 appeared first on BotCore.

When Should A Chatbot Initiate A Human Handoff?

Jagan Jami — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 11:24:00 +0000

When Should A Chatbot Initiate A Human Handoff?

While chatbots today are becoming intelligent enough to address several simple and complex queries of users, there will always be situations where a conversation needs a human touch and should be handed over to a live agent. In an ideal scenario, chatbots should act as a first line of support by capturing users’ information and either solve issues completely or transfer the conversation to an agent.

This transition should be quick, seamless and non-intrusive to ensure swift response times and a great user experience. Chatbots with human-in-the-loop capabilities, can deliver differentiated service experiences that delight your customers and employees.

In this article, we’ll discuss the different scenarios where a human hand off is needed and how a chatbot can execute it successfully.

Why is a human in the loop important?

Even though the chatbot technology is advancing at a rapid pace, bots today aren’t always capable of grasping the needs of a customer. Customer needs and queries are diverse and always emerging. For instance, say you launched a new product/service. Needless to say, you’ll see a surge of varied requests from customers who’re trying it for the first time. Even if you deploy a basic FAQ bot, live agent support is always needed as there’ll be numerous unexpected questions that the chatbot can’t answer and need personalized human attention.

Let’s take another example. Maria, a customer of XYZ bank, wants to purchase tickets for a popular concert. She tries to make an online payment through her debit card and finds her card has been disabled for some unknown reasons. She tries to interact with the bank’s chatbot. The bot couldn’t solve Maria’s rather unique problem and offers generic solutions. Maria, who is already in a hurry to buy the tickets, is now further frustrated due to the lack of right assistance.

In situations like this, a chatbot should understand Maria’s tonality and recognize it’s important to perform a human handoff. Or else, people like Maria will be left with a bad customer experience.

The above examples highlight a common challenge that businesses face when deploying a chatbot. While chatbots are excellent first line support agents, they can’t interact with customers the way a human does. Contact centres and service desks should therefore configure their chatbots to better recognize when the conversation gets too complex to handle and a human agent is needed.

4 Scenarios Where A Human Hand Off Should Be Initiated

1. User Sentiment

When a customer sounds unhappy, frustrated, angry and annoyed, the chatbot should proactively provide the option to talk with a live agent. This requires chatbots to have NLP & sentiment analysis capabilities to detect the tonality of the user using keywords or emotional triggers.

2. Criticality of the conversation

Chatbots should detect critical situations which involve sensitive conversations, high-value transactions or a customer at the risk of churning and hand over the conversation to a agent for maximum end user experience.

3. Complex Issues

A chatbot should triage a user’s request, capture their information and analyze if it can handle the issue at hand. It should be smart enough to recognize if it can’t and suggest the “Talk to a Human Agent” option.

4. User Preference

At times customers might be in a rush and want to resolve the issue quickly. A chatbot should always include the “Talk to an agent” option in its main menu.

Learn More:

5 Key Chatbot Capabilities Required For A Seamless Handover

1. Chat Transcripts

When a human handoff occurs, the agent should receive the full history of the chatbot-user conversation. This should include details about context and sentiment scores. This way customers don’t have to repeat their information and problems again to the agent. Also there has to be a seamless transfer of Human Agent back to the chatbot.

The chatbot should clearly highlight when the human agent is participating in the conversation and when the chatbot is back into the conversation.

2. Robust integration with live agent software

The chatbot builder platform should integrate seamlessly with live agent softwares like LiveChat, LivePerson, Salesforce, etc.This enables your agents to continue using the existing software without having to let go of current functionality and workflows in your contact center or service desk support software.

3. Multilingual Support

When your customers are spread across multiple geographies, the bots should translate their queries for the human agents while routing the communication. This is instrumental in ensuring customer satisfaction.

Learn More: Multilingal Chatbots:Benefits And Key Implementations

4. NLP and Sentiment Analysis

Using NLP and sentiment analysis, bots should gauge the mood of the user and ascertain if they need to talk to a live human agent.

Learn More:

5. Agent Observation

At times, support agents intend to monitor bot conversations instead of completely taking charge. In such cases, the bot can privately take agent authorization for the prescribed solution before actually suggesting it to the user. For example, consider a help desk scenario where a bot is interacting with a user to prescribe a solution to a computer problem. With its machine learning model, the bot detects the cause of the issue. However, before advising the solution to the user, the bot can privately consult a human agent and request authorization for its diagnosis. The agent can then click a button and the bot will provide the solution to the user. The bot still does all the legwork, but a human agent controls the final decision.

Wrapping Up

As chatbots become a key part of customer support, it’s imperative to upgrade them with new capabilities. A seamless chatbot-human handoff is critical not only to improve customer experience but also drive user adoption. With rules or failure conditions, chatbots can be trained to easily escalate a customer issue to a human agent.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our enterprise chatbot consultants for a personalized consultation. You may also be interested in exploring our enterprise chatbot builder platform (BotCore).

The post When Should A Chatbot Initiate A Human Handoff? appeared first on BotCore.

Amid COVID-19, How Are Chatbots Solving IT Help Desk Challenges

Jagan Jami — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 11:03:00 +0000

Amid COVID-19, How Are Chatbots Solving IT Help Desk Challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a serious wake up call for companies which put digital transformation and AI adoption in the back-burner. It made us all realize that adopting emerging digital and AI technologies is not so much an option but a necessity.

One significant area where digital transformation has become critical is ITSM. In the past few weeks, we have seen IT help desks in several companies struggling to manage the sudden unprecedented surge in incidents, issues and requests. Some of our key observations include:

Incidents are continuing to grow as a large number of employees are trying to access different types of applications simultaneously and remotely
In order to maintain smooth operations, organizations are rushing to rollout critical business apps without proper testing. Once the issues are detected in the production environment, more incidents come up
Incidents and requests range from simple ones like setting up VPNs, authentication issues to complex ones like accelerating the deployment of new digital initiatives to ensure business continuity
When troubleshooting end users’ issues with SaaS apps, it’s becoming difficult for service desks to determine whether the issue is related to the network connection, users’ equipment or the app itself

Ensuring that an IT helpdesk is running hassle free at all times has been an ongoing challenge for many enterprises even before this pandemic. Many of these organizations already face a shortage of help desk staff. And with the new unique challenges, the situation is becoming further overwhelming. Employees are being kept on hold for hours before their issue is resolved. Just imagine the loss of productivity.

How IT Helpdesk Chatbots Can Help?

A huge volume of requests are usually ‘basic’ or ‘simple’ questions that take a lot of time to answer. When most of your workforce is working remotely, the overhead on the helpdesk team to resolve such queries is huge.

One of the easiest ways to overcome these challenges is to deploy an IT Helpdesk Chatbot and enable self-service to employees.

A chatbot is not only a powerful solution to address repetitive and low-value requests but also super easy to deploy.

A chatbot will be available 24*7 on any device and can handle requests across the organization simultaneously. This will allow your IT staff to move away from a reactive environment where they are constantly putting out fires and focus on productive and proactive tasks.

Chatbots conduct multi-turn conversations (something most help desk requests involve) and guide users to resolve the issue through a series of steps.

In addition to solving simple requests and low-value tickets, chatbots are becoming increasingly intelligent to address several complex queries as well. The AI, NLP and ML integrated in a chatbot helps it learn from previous conversations, understand user intent better and deliver smarter responses.

When the chatbot can’t handle a particular query, it’ll handover the conversation to a human agent.

With low-code chatbot builder platforms like Microsoft Virtual Agents and BotCore, you can build and deploy a simple FAQ bot within hours and with limited resources! These chatbots also come with prebuilt connectors and easily integrate with your existing help desk platforms like ServiceNow, JIRA, Freshdesk etc.

Join Our Webinar:

24/7 IT Virtual Agents – Supporting your remote workforce anytime & everywhere

Benefits Of A IT helpdesk Bot

Easy and quick rollout
Seamless integration
Super fast responses
Reduced cost per ticket and IT support costs
Improved productivity of help desk agents
Eliminate calls and emails: The bot acts as a single point of contact for help desk requests
24X7 availability in both mobile and desktop devices
Real-time alerts
Enterprise level security
Employee self-service

Learn More: How AI Bots Can Revolutionize Enterprise Helpdesk?

Key Capabilities To Look For In A IT helpdesk Bot

Incident Management
Incident notifications
Incident creation
Submit change requests
New change request notifications
Task notifications and notes
Outage Management
Sends outage alerts
Displays real time outages
Sends outage reports
Security Management
Reset passwords for devices and network and generate tokens
Disable, wipe or suspend device
Real-Time Alerts
Access request notifications
Asset request notifications
Outage alerts
Authentication alerts
Human Hand off

The chatbot should be intelligent enough to recognize situations where it can’t help the user and should hand over the conversation to an agent. As soon as the bot learns that a human intervention is required, it should present users with an option to “chat with an agent”. Once the user clicks the option, an agent takes over the conversation.

Learn More: Chatbots Human Handoff

Get Started With A IT Helpdesk Chatbot

We are forced into the largest work-from-home experiment and many employees have little to no experience in adopting the new environment. Right from setting up their home offices, VPNs, to adopting video conferencing and collaboration apps, employees are facing a myriad of challenges and flooding the helpdesk with repetitive requests. An ITSM chatbot streamlines the helpdesk workflow, enables self-service and acts as a level-1 support agent.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our AI and ITSM experts for a personalized consultation.

The post Amid COVID-19, How Are Chatbots Solving IT Help Desk Challenges appeared first on BotCore.

How Chatbots Are Helping The Fight Against The COVID-19 Crisis

Jagan Jami — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 10:28:00 +0000

How Chatbots Are Helping The Fight Against The COVID-19 Crisis

As the impacts of the pandemic deepen and governments continue to enforce social quarantine to “flatten the curve”, it is innovative technologies like chatbots that are coming to the rescue. Their diverse range of applications, cost-effectiveness, and ease of implementation, is resulting in more and more organizations readily adopting them. From customer support, crisis management, internal communications to remote work support, organizations are using these conversational interfaces in different ways to fight this pandemic.

Let’s look into this in detail.

Functions Where Chatbots Are Making A Difference

1. Crisis Management

Chatbots are essential not only because they answer FAQs of employees, but also for their ability to conduct human-like conversations – something very desirable when people are isolated and going through difficult times.

In regards to crisis management, chatbots can help in

Sending public health information to employees from sources like WHO and CDC
Performing employee health checks
Keeping employees informed about the company’s latest advisories, and news
Sending work from home tips for remote workers

In fact, Global Telecom, a Filipino telecommunications company, has implemented a chatbot named Digital Usher for Disasters and Emergencies (DUDE) to keep the management updated on its employee’s health and well-being. The chatbot does daily health status checks for its 8000+ employees.

2. Human Resources (HR)

The lockdown has put a huge burden on HR. The economic downturn has piled up their inboxes with emails from employees concerned about their work status, paycheck, and lack of procedural clarity. Moreover, managing the hiring and onboarding process has become incredibly difficult in the remote environment, resulting in offers being rescinded and talent choosing to join competitors. In such a scenario, chatbots can play a major role in streamlining the HR workflows.

Not only can chatbots answer FAQ, provide policy-related information to the workforce but also automate the hiring process and run virtual training programs and assessments. For instance, in industries which are aggressively hiring, chatbots can screen applications, conduct background checks on thousands of people, collect candidate data and help the HR team to focus more on productive tasks. Moreover, chatbots can make the training and onboarding processes interactive and interesting by ensuring active participation.

Learn More: HR Bots, Chatbots for Employees,

3. IT Services Management (ITSM)

In the past few weeks, we have seen IT help desks in several companies struggling to manage the sudden unprecedented surge in incidents, issues and requests. Needless to say this is largely due to the sudden shift to remote working.

A huge volume of these requests are usually ‘basic’ or ‘simple’ questions that take a lot of time to answer. A chatbot is a powerful solution to address repetitive and low-value requests. They’re available 24*7 and can handle multiple requests simultaneously. If the chatbot is unable to handle a particular query, it can always hand over the conversation to a human agent.

This will allow your IT staff to focus on productive and proactive tasks.

Learn More: IT Helpdesk Bot

How Different Industries Are Leveraging Chatbots Amid COVID-19

1. Government

Chatbots can enable governments to relay critical and accurate information to the public as and when they require it, providing much-needed clarity on some FAQs related to lockdowns, COVID-19 symptoms, testing locations, and the affected areas.

Interestingly, the British Government has launched a WhatsApp-powered chatbot, to prevent misinformation and spread reliable health information by sharing the latest news updates and health guidance, as per the chosen option, reducing the burden on the National Health Services (NHS). Additionally, WHO has also started to utilize chatbots in its app to prevent misinformation and spread reliable health information. The chatbot also conducts interactive quizzes in multiple languages.

2. Healthcare

In these testing times, with people facing a global recession, financial uncertainty, and increased health anxiety, their mental health is taking a beating. In such a scenario, AI-powered chatbots can not only help relay vital information but also help to cope with the increased stress 24×7. As the health industry continues to champion our fight against the pandemic, chatbots can also ease the burden on it by directly helping people through guided meditations, diet, and fitness programs.

Chatbots also help in communicating with digitally disconnected front line workers and sending the latest information right to their mobile messaging apps. Another popular use case amid this pandemic is remote patient screening.

Jefferson Health, a leading academic health system in the USA, has deployed a conversational chatbot to remotely screen patients and prioritize cases without the risk of exposure. The chatbot also digitized the patient intake process to streamline appointment scheduling for COVID-19 testing.

3. Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

With a drastic fall in physical store traffic, much of the demand for CPG has shifted online, with many executives publicly stating that they are zeroing in on digital commerce to target their customer base. With convenience and accessibility as the driving factors, they realize that implementing chatbots can be a vital step in this direction.

Not only can chatbots be used internally to manage restocks, track orders, and research promotions but also for online customer support to enhance the customer experience.

Britannia Industries, a leader in the CPG space, has launched a GPS-powered WhatsApp-based chatbot in light of the current social quarantine and rising demand. The chatbot is helping consumers locate grocery stores which have the organization’s products. In fact, the chatbot also sends notifications to the customers automatically whenever the store’s stock is refilled.

Learn More: CPG bots, Chatbots for CPG

4. Retail

With physical stores being open only for a few hours and supply chains hampered, retailers are changing their policies related to shippings, products among many others. A chatbot can be used to inform customers about these changing policies and keep them updated.

Learn More: Retail Bots, Chatbots for Retail industry,

5. Restaurants

With restaurants transitioning into takeouts only, their menus, service offerings, pricing, and timings have changed. Letting people know about these changes is important. Moreover, with them operating with limited staff, order taking and tracking can become a handful. Chatbots can be used to relay any changes and updates to customers, as well as collect orders from them.

Conclusion

Any doubts that businesses may have had about chatbots prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, have been put to rest. With the market dynamics changing in face of the social quarantine, chatbots are growing in popularity. Their use case is no longer limited to customer service, they are becoming an integral component of an organization’s operations, both internally and externally. A chatbot’s range of applications, scalability, and ease of implementation are some key drivers for its adoption amid this crisis.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our chatbot consultants for a personalized consultation.

The post How Chatbots Are Helping The Fight Against The COVID-19 Crisis appeared first on BotCore.

Envisioning The Work-Life Of An Employee In A Chatbot-Driven Enterprise

Jagan Jami — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 10:09:00 +0000

Envisioning The Work-Life Of An Employee In A Chatbot-Driven Enterprise

Meet Nathan. He has recently joined ABC Corp. as a Marketing Manager. The new job means a new city and the tension associated with relocation. But one thing that Nathan is thankful for is that the hiring and on-boarding process was seamless and did not require him to visit their office again and again. But how was this achieved? Well, luckily for Nathan, ABC Corp. happens to be one of the forward-thinking organizations that uses chatbots for all their HR, ITSM, and Business Intelligence related tasks.

what is a chatbot?

A chatbot is a computer program or an artificial intelligence which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Chatbots are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner and are used for various practical enterprise use cases including customer service, IT helpdesk, HR or information acquisition (Business Intelligence).

ABC Corp uses BotCore’s AI chatbot which enables organizations to build and deploy customized AI chatbots. So, let us see how Nathan’s life at ABC Corp. has been impacted by chatbots.

chatbots – making nathan’s life easier

Nathan has joined as a Marketing Manager. A typical day in the life of someone in this role entails multiple team meetings, client interactions and brainstorming sessions that require them to access records and data insights on the go. Also, since marketing managers almost always have days that are jam-packed, having someone take care of handling internal processes such as applying for leave, giving appraisals, searching for reports and information and keeping them abreast of upcoming meetings etc. would be a boon. Someone like a personal assistant; BUT, not everyone can have an assistant tracking these details. It is just not a feasible option. However, everyone can seek help from a virtual assistant. In order to see how chatbots are helping Nathan handle daily life at ABC Corp., let us look at some scenarios.

Recruitment

When Nathan applied for the position at ABC Corp., he was immediately sent a text message by Allie, ABC’s recruitment bot.

Allie: Hello Nathan. I am Allie from ABC Corp. I am reaching out to you in response to your application for the position of Marketing Manager.

Allie: We see that your skill set matches that which is required for the role. Could I go ahead and set up an interview for you with our GM-Marketing?

Nathan: Thanks, Allie Sure!

Allie: Thank you Nathan. Would the 1st July 2019, 12 PM work for you?

Nathan: Umm…will I be required to come to your HQ location?

Allie: That will not be necessary. I see that you are based in a different city, hence we could have the interview via Skype. Is that okay?

Nathan: That would be perfect. Thank you!

Allie: You are welcome. Please add ABCCorp as a contact on Skype. I have sent you a calendar invite for the interview. Kindly acknowledge the same.

Nathan: Sure.

Allie: Thank you Nathan. Have a great day ahead. And good luck for the interview!

Nathan was extremely pleased with how efficient Allie was in reaching out to him quickly, understanding his location criteria and setting up an interview accordingly. In a recent survey by Allegis it was noted that 58% of candidates were comfortable interacting with AI and recruitment chatbots in the early stages of the application process. In fact, about 66% of candidates were comfortable with AI and chatbots taking care of interview scheduling and peripheral activity.

Essentially, a recruitment chatbot can collect information from candidates such as their resume and contact information, help set up an interview with a human stakeholder based on his/her calendar, collect screening details such as experience and skills and answer the candidate’s basic questions about the job.

Learn more: How Chatbots Can Simplify the Recruitment Process

HR Onboarding

Once Nathan cleared the interview and was offered the job, he was reached out by Allie once again.

Allie: Hello Nathan. This is Allie. Congratulations on the offer, Welcome to ABC Corp!

Nathan: Hi Allie. Thank you very much.

Allie: Before we start the onboarding formalities, do you have any questions I can help you with?

Nathan: As a matter of fact, yes. Could you please send me any company related information I should be well-versed in before getting started?

Allie: Absolutely! Below is a company overview video to get you started with!

Allie: You can also refer this intranet page for more information [Read Now]

Nathan: Great! Thanks Allie. Could you also send across the leave policy and the list of holidays for this year?

Allie: Sure. Here are the leave policy and the holiday calendar. [Check Now]

Now, please note that as part of the onboarding process, you are required to send across copies of the following documents to hr@abccorp.com:

Personal Identification Details – any authority attested identification card would do

Last 3 payslips from your previous employer

Bank account details

Nathan: Sure, I will send them across.

Allie: Okay. Also sending across the NDA. Please sign the same and send it across.

Nathan: Okay.

Allie: Great! Thank you Nathan..

Nathan: I’d like to raise an IT request for requesting a new laptop

Allie: Sure, your request is recorded. An IT agent will get in touch with you soon!

Nathan: That’s great, Thanks Allie!

Learn More: How Chatbots are Revolutionizing The HR Department

IT Helpdesk

Nathan has started his first day at ABC Corp. and has met his team. He has been given access to the company’s marketing dashboard but is unable to sign in. He remembers that ABC Corp. uses an IT helpdesk bot that can be accessed using the internal messaging tool. He decides to seek help.

Nathan: Hi.

IT Bot: Hello Nathan. Welcome to ABC Corp. How can I help you?

Nathan: Well, I am unable to sign in to the marketing dashboard.

IT Bot: Have you been granted access?

Nathan: Yes. I was sent an email earlier that I can now access the dashboard to see project-specific details. But my sign-in credentials do not work.

IT Bot: Sorry about that. Let me check.

Nathan: Sure.

IT Bot: Looks like there was a technical problem with credential generation. I have sent across a password reset link to your email ID. Kindly use it to sign in with the new password.

Nathan: Okay. Thank you.

IT Bot: My pleasure. Is there anything else I may assist you with?

Nathan: No.

IT Bot: Okay! Have a nice day Nathan.

Nathan uses the password reset link to quickly sign-in to the dashboard. He is happy that instead of having to waste time locating and asking the right people for the fix, he was able to reach out to the IT helpdesk bot in no time.

business intelligence

It has now been a couple of weeks since Nathan joined ABC Corp. Today he is scheduled to meet with the head of Alpha Foods, a long-standing customer of the company. One of the issues that Alpha Foods is facing is a steep decline in sales. Nathan has been asked by his manager to focus on the issue in order to come up with a fix. Before he walks into the meeting, Nathan wants to be abreast of the company’s revenue and sales data. He decides to use Mylo, ABC Corp.’s Business Intelligence bot.

Nathan: Hi Mylo.

Mylo: Hello Nathan. How can I help you today?

Nathan: I have a meeting with Alpha Foods. Can I see their annual revenue details for last year?

Mylo: Sure. Alpha Foods’ annual revenue for 2017-2018 is 90 Billion.

Nathan: Okay, can you break that down by region?

Mylo: USA – 32B, Asia Pacific region – 35.7B, Europe – 22.3B.

Nathan: Okay, can I see a graphical representation of their sales in the Asia Pacific region?

Mylo: Yes.

Nathan: Well, that doesn’t look good. What about their sales in Europe and USA?

Mylo: They seem to be doing pretty well there. Sales in Europe have seen an improvement of 6% on average annually. Sales in the USA are on the uprise too – at an average annual rate of 2%.

Nathan: Map sales numbers for Asia Pacific with their trade promotional campaigns from the last 5 years.

Mylo: There are no trade promotions from Alpha in Asia Pacific between the years 2013 – 2018.

Nathan: That explains it. This is enough insight for now. Can you mail these figures to me as well?

Mylo: Sure. The details have been sent to your email.

Nathan has understood that Alpha Foods is facing an issue specifically in the Asia Pacific region as they are facing a hard time attracting customers to their products. Nathan uses the data insights provided by Mylo to suggest a new trade promotional campaign to boost sales for Alpha in the Asia Pacific region.

Learn More: Why Business Intelligence Needs Chatbots to Boost User Adoption & ROI

Intranet/Employee Assistant

Nathan routinely reaches out to Mia, the company’s intranet & employee assistant bot to check on internal company updates and to set up meetings.

Nathan: Hi Mia. Please schedule a meeting with Alex from the Sales team for tomorrow at noon.

Mia: Confirming, meeting tomorrow with Alex Knoxville at 12 PM?

Nathan: Confirm.

Mia: Meeting scheduled. Calendar invite sent to Alex.

Nathan: Any other updates?

Mia: Yes. The leave policy for the year 2019 has been updated. Tap to see the latest policy.

Nathan: Well, send it to my email instead.

Mia: Updated leave policy sent to your email.

Mia has made simple, daily tasks a breeze for Nathan.

Learn More: The Role of Chatbots in the Intranet

explore how chatbots can help

While these are only a few popular work-life scenarios in which chatbots can help Nathan, the fact is that several other ways bots can simplify work for him or any normal employee. The conversational interface of chatbots simplify everyday workflows for employees and eliminates the hassle of switching multiple apps. Chatbots act as a single point of contact to get tasks done and access information. The use cases of chatbots are diverse and emerging across functions and industries. Enterprise leaders should have a powerful bot strategy to make the most of this technology.

If you’re interested in learning more about chatbots and how they help your organization, feel free to get in touch with one of our chatbot consultants. Acuvate leverages its enterprise chatbot builder platform, BotCore to build, deploy, train and manage AI chatbots for large and medium sized enterprises.

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10 Key Chatbot Implementation Considerations You Should Be Aware Of

Jagan Jami — Fri, 24 Aug 2018 10:40:00 +0000

10 Key Chatbot Implementation Considerations You Should Be Aware Of

According to a report featured by Business Insider, 80% of businesses want chatbots by 2020!

Chatbots today are being deployed across large, medium and small organizations to simplify business workflows and reduce customer service costs. Chatbots provide seamless self-service options to your customers and employees. They help your IT support, HR and customer service teams focus on productive activities and reduce time and effort involved in mundane tasks.

Any technology is only as good as how it’s implemented and leveraged across the organization

Implementation and deployment of enterprise chatbots are fraught with a few challenges as well. Without a robust bot strategy and being aware of some key governance, privacy and security considerations, organizations can’t make the most of their chatbot implementation. Many CIOs and IT executives who consult us at our Build-A-Bot strategy workshop, seek advice on some common chatbot deployment challenges in their organization.

Based on our learnings and after deploying chatbots for several Fortune 500 companies, we have enlisted those below to help you plan your chatbot implementation better and achieve maximum business value from your chatbots-

security and privacy

Any organization implementing chatbots should pay close attention to privacy and security. One should ensure that chatbots are compliant with GDPR or any other industry-specific or location-specific regulations and policies. Providing information to users based on their authorization levels is also crucial to ensure the privacy of information. User identity authentication, intent level authorization, channel authorization, end to end encryption, and intent level privacy, are some ways to enhance the security and privacy of your chatbot.

Learn more: 9 Ways To Enhance Chatbot Security

chatbots implementation can get expensive without proper expertise

Building home-grown chatbots without prior experience and understanding of the do’s and don’ts can make the implementation a mismanaged, disorganized, and costly venture. Especially customized chatbots may require a lot of lead time and technological understanding in implementation. Choosing “off-the-shelf” ready solutions from experienced chatbot service providers is one option.

setting the right expectations

Owing to the hype around Artificial Intelligence in the media, chatbots are largely considered as the one-stop solution that can solely streamline all business operations. However, this is not true. It’s imperative for a service provider to set the right expectations for their clients. Users must be made aware of the capabilities of a chatbot before they are deployed. This can be achieved by

Recognizing the champion user: There may be a large number of user groups or internal departments working together on or with the chatbot, however, it’s crucial to identify and thoroughly train one champion user from each department on the functioning of the bot.
Internal Marketing: Prior to deploying the chatbot, all users should be educated on the various use cases, capabilities and benefits of this new tool. If employees are not made aware of the bot functioning, there exists a high risk of low adoption and thereby low project ROIs or even failure of the project.
The right time to market: Large corporations may have thousands of employees in several departments dispersed across different countries and languages. Considering the needs and nuances of all the business divisions and cultures involved may take a lot of time. The extensive wait for the chatbot deployment might result in lowered enthusiasm.

infusing NLP and machine learning

In order for users to like and adopt chatbots, they should find them to be useful, relatable, and trustworthy. Users should be well aware of the capabilities of the chatbot. Though bots cannot entirely conduct human-level conversations, they should give a feel of meaningful interaction and people should be satisfied with the responses either through text or voice. Infusing NLP and Machine Learning into bots is a must for an enhanced and personalized user experience.

understanding how successful your chatbot is

The user experience with chatbots needs to be gauged. You may take feedback from your users and ask them about their chatbot experience and understand how the chatbot could be improved which helps you to find out if they are any developmental areas. You can also assign some business KPIs to your chatbot performance. Direct KPIs can be a reduction in customer service or HR or IT costs, a difference in the number of tickets raised, etc. A few indirect KPIs are employee engagement, customer experience, and so on.

future-proofing your chatbot

Chatbot technology is advancing at a very fast pace. Ensure your chatbot can leverage any AI service available today and will scale for future services. This can be achieved by choosing bot platforms with cognitive abstraction. This abstraction layer also ensures you’re not locked down to any specific AI chatbot vendor or product.

improve chatbot capabilities with data

Data gathered by the chatbot can be leveraged for user insights, allowing you to understand the user needs and improve the capabilities of the chatbot continuously. Robust enterprise chatbot platforms usually are equipped with chatbot analytics to harness user data.

human hand-off

There’s always some cases when a chatbot simply cannot drive a query to its conclusion, so organisations need to ensure that there is always a human that can take over the conversation if necessary. Transferring the conversation to a human should be as seamless as possible without reducing user experience.

overcoming resistance

There could be a fear in many employees that AI and chatbots may pose a threat to their jobs. Employees should be made aware and ensured that a bot has the capability to relieve them of their repetitive work and make them more productive.

ensuring your chatbots fit in with your brand identity

Bots have to be tailor-made to match your brand identity and tone. This also helps in enhancing the user experience.

Chatbots are undoubtedly one of the most promising enterprise AI technologies. But maximizing the value from them requires extensive technical and functional expertise and a robust implementation methodology.

If implemented in an effective and data-driven manner with all challenges managed efficiently, chatbots can bring a huge transformation in your employee and customer service workflows.

If you’re planning to implement chatbots for your company, feel free to get in touch with us for a personalized consultation with one of our Artificial Intelligence and chatbot experts. Acuvate’s highly regarded expertise in AI and bots can help you overcome all teething issues and implementation challenges and help you achieve maximum returns from your chatbot investments.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.

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The post 10 Key Chatbot Implementation Considerations You Should Be Aware Of appeared first on BotCore.

Different Ways Manufacturing Companies Can Use Chatbots

Jagan Jami — Fri, 18 May 2018 23:32:00 +0000

Different Ways Manufacturing Companies Can Use Chatbots

The global chatbot market is expected to reach $1.23 billion by 2025 at a CAGR of 24.3 percent – Grand View Research

Organizations across the world are looking for ways they too can deploy chatbots in their organization and drive rapid efficiencies. There are a variety of benefits that chatbots can offer – simplified internal workflows, improved customer experience and increased employee productivity. The manufacturing industry is keen to adopt chatbots as well.

While the use cases we’ve mentioned are quite generic, chatbots do have specific niche applications for the manufacturing industry, that can be quite the game changers for this sector as a whole. Let’s take a quick look at a few plausible scenarios:

SUPPLIES AND INVENTORY

Often, the manufacturing industry suffers losses because supplies are collected even before a need for them is registered. Leveraging a chatbot-based query system allows managers to check the status of parts and materials simply by using a messaging app on their smartphones. They can obtain specific information they’d require in order to process orders successfully.

Chatbots that are integrated with messaging apps allow managers and buyers to order additional supplies when required via the same interface. The bot takes their requests and converts them into a formal order and facilitates successful fulfilment.

ORDER FULFILMENT AND DELIVERY

If products meet desired expectations, delivery is typically the last step of the supply chain management lifecycle. Chatbots facilitate the efficient functioning of this step – managers and buyers can simply ask queries in human language to obtain information about pending orders and current inventory. Further, they can also obtain information about expected delivery dates and status of the shipment.

ALLOW MAINTENANCE CREWS TO CHECK ENVIRONMENT OR WORKPLACE CONDITIONS

We expect that chatbots will soon play an instrumental role in controlling the environmental conditions in manufacturing units. This ensures smooth functioning of operations. A chatbot can align with existing platforms and provide reports on various equipment metrics. Employees, too, can simply ask the chatbot questions on the metrics, and make necessary alterations to the temperature, pressure, etc. to ensure that the equipment is performing at maximum efficiency.

Another advantage of using chatbots over making employees login to separate devices to access these metrics, is that a chatbot can be accessed easily from any mobile device, making timely changes possible.

SUPPLY CHAIN

The manufacturing industry is heavily reliant on a supply chain management system to glean important information about inventory, shipping and optimizing labor and resources. Building supply chain bots will simplify interactions between employees, so they have access to all the data they require, thereby increasing overall productivity and engagement.

These bots can provide real-time status updates on the manufacturing process – including products that have been produced, distributed and returned. Bots also enable you to keep effortless track of purchase orders, in-stock and out-of-stock inventory, produce reports for shipping notifications and more.

DEVELOP A BOT STRATEGY

We’ve only mentioned a few use cases to limit the scope of this blog – however, manufacturers have a plethora of ways they can leverage chatbots to drive business efficiencies. We recommend working with a strategic partner to develop a bot roadmap to discover high-impact use cases within your organization.

Feel free to get in touch with one of our Manufacturing chatbot experts for a free consultation and get a free demo of our AI-Powered Chatbot building platform – BotCore.

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Every ERP System Needs An AI Chatbot. Here’s Why

Jagan Jami — Fri, 04 May 2018 21:35:00 +0000

Every ERP System Needs An AI Chatbot. Here’s Why

55% to 75% of all ERP projects fail to meet their objectives – Gartner

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has long conjured up images of confusion and a falling apart of even the best-laid strategies for business users. ERP systems which typically feature complex user interfaces have done little to improve the productivity of even the most enthusiastic users. Users are forced to spend way too much navigating the system, switching from one window to the next, and across multiple dashboards to access important data and get tasks done.

As organizations have increasingly started to see the drawbacks with an ERP system, they’ve begun to actively seek strategies in which to facilitate the usage of ERP to generate real business outcomes.

Over the years, several organizations have implemented external facing chatbots to interact with customers. You enter an e-commerce website and you’re immediately greeted with a chatbot checking in with you to help you around the online store. And this has proven to be rather successful at engaging customers.

Is there a way to integrate this same, proven technology into employee-facing applications, to facilitate the vast number of internal business applications? It would absolutely revolutionize ERP, Line of Business (LOB), Employee Self Service (ESS) and various other systems.

WHAT IS A CHATBOT?

A chatbot is essentially a software that is powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, and can carry human-like conversations. Conversations between the user and a bot happen via a chat interface using textual or auditory methods.

Bots are usually built using a chatbot platform or frameworks, and deployed on messaging apps like Skype, Skype for Business, Slack, Google Teams etc. or virtual assistants like Alexa, to converse with end-users, via natural language.

WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER INTEGRATING CHATBOTS INTO YOUR ERP SYSTEM

MAKE BETTER DECISIONS AND QUICKER

In a cut-throat environment, what sets one organization apart from the rest, is the ability to implement fast decision making that is driven by meaningful insights. By implementing chatbots, you will be able to give decision makers the power to access ERP and business data, without having to switch across multiple screens and dashboards. Data they require can be made available to them incredibly easily, by only having to ask natural-language questions to the ERP bot. Leveraging the power of a bot will mean the drastic simplification of data consumption for decision-makers.

Additionally, if data is too complex to be sent or shared on a chat window, bots can even be designed to provide links to the relevant ERP screen. Bots enable improve decision making across the board, including marketing, sales and finance departments.

All of these teams rely heavily on intelligent decision-making – the role of bots providing them with just the right data they seek, will not only cut time spent on navigation, but will also help them power through the process of deriving relevant insights from the data consumed. Bots can also be used to generate exhaustive reports or specific data-points from any given report.

Bots can also provide information in a format of your choice of consumption – whether that is plain text or rich-media formats, including but not limited to graphs, pie-charts, and others.

ENABLE EFFICIENT MOBILE ACCESS TO ERP DATA

Employees who work remotely will require access to ERP data in an easy-to-consume format. Furthermore, field personnel will require mobile access to ERP data, as well.

Mobile ERP client apps provide remote workforces, typically salespeople and warehouse managers, who are at client sites or freight deports, on-demand insights into resource planning. However, because the screen sizes are so small, it can be rather challenging to access data.

It is especially important that they are able to access the required data, within seconds and with ease. While on the ‘field’, so to speak, they will not have the time to navigate through endless reports. They require data and insights in as little time as possible. Integrating a chatbot interface enables your ERP users to access your ERP data through a single field.

Chatbots address this time and location challenge for businesses, by generating quick answers via natural language questions.

PERSONALIZED ALERTS

By introducing chatbots to ERP, you can receive personalized alerts, and act on the alert from a device of your choosing – whether that is a computer or mobile device. These alerts enable users to immediately spring into action and request for more information or potential solutions on addressing the alert. Needless to say, this use case will have a plethora of applications across various departments of an organization.

AUTOMATING ERP DATA INPUT

A major expense of any organization still revolves around data inputs. Several members of the workforce are dedicated their time to an exhausting process of manually inputting data. This often results in data redundancy and entering incorrect data. Leveraging the power of bots which are driven by AI will greatly reduce the time it takes to input and change data.

Bots will do all of the groundwork in data mining, modification and submitting relevant data into the records, after eliminating repeated entries. Your employees can save time spent on mind-numbing activities of eliminating repeated/incorrect entries, and focus on activities that facilitate organization growth instead!

IMPROVED USER EXPERIENCE AND ADOPTION

Because of the complexities of using an ERP system and the dismal user experience, they fail to garner high adoption rates. This is typically why most ERP systems fail. However, your ERP investment can deliver the results you are looking for, by introducing bots.

Bots behave as a nearly human-like representative of the ERP system by being available on demand, 24/7, at the tip of the user’s fingers, and across various devices. They also act as a single platform for accessing ERP data, updating data, generating reports and receiving personalized alerts. All of these factors work together to improve end-user experience tremendously, which subsequently results in increased adoption rates.

In addition to the ERP, chatbots have various applications across other business systems as well, including but not limited to, LOB, Business Intelligence, CRM and so on. The bottomline is this: chatbots get you the information and insights you require to make intelligent, everyday business decisions and craft organizational strategies that have the potential to revolutionize the growth trajectory for your business.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.

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The post Every ERP System Needs An AI Chatbot. Here’s Why appeared first on BotCore.

How Chatbots Help HR Managers Improve Employee Experience and Reduce Cost per Contact

Jagan Jami — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 13:52:00 +0000

How Chatbots Help HR Managers Improve Employee Experience And Reduce Cost Per Contact

Imagine the spike in productivity if each of your employees is empowered with a knowledgeable and personalized assistant at no further resource cost. With the proliferation and high adoption of chatbots, this is no longer fiction, it is a living reality. HR managers are able to experience an ideal vision of this era — realize a digitally, self-service and employee-driven environment supported by people representing the organization’s HR function. Chatbots, through the interactive and conversational interface, are making it happen.

Chatbots enabled by machine learning have a steeper and faster learning curve than any human. Especially when knowledge base needs to be updated, they do not require continuous training in comparison to people. Primarily, chatbots are deployed where the push and pull capabilities need to be used.

With push features, chatbots strengthen internal communications by sending out announcements and notifications. It is also used to send out training modules and updates to the employees’ inbox. The other areas where chatbots are used are the onboarding process and employee engagement.

Using pull features, chatbots have provided support in areas like recruitment, employer brand building, training, FAQs and virtual assistants. Users can use bots to pull information and also bots can push personalized updates/anomalies/trends to the user.

Visionary companies choosing the AI route are already reaping results by employing chatbots to improve different functions of the Human Resource (HR) department, enhance employee experience and reduce Cost per Contact (CPC).

CHATBOTS ADDING CAPABILITIES TO HUMANS

It is easy to identify the sub-functions where chatbots have flourished. Apart from that, there are some core capabilities that chatbots add to humans, enhancing their skill sets. These capabilities aid in enhancing employee experience, something that has a direct influence on ROI.

INTEGRATION WITH OTHER DEPARTMENT SOFTWARE BEHEMOTHS:

Chatbots may seem simple as an interface, but they have the brain of their own at the backend. Apart from HRM, they integrate with cross-functional management solutions like ERP, CRM, analytics, accounting and the intranet. These management suites hold large data sets and need to talk to each other. Chatbots become the linchpin that binds data across the organization and keeps the cohesiveness of information intact.

ESCALATION TO HUMAN-LED HIERARCHIES:

80% of query management and responses are managed by the chatbots itself. However, those interactions that require the attention of a human agent are escalated automatically by the chatbot whenever necessary. Chatbots are capable of skill-based routing which helps in prompting to the right person with the relevant issue.

GOVERNANCE & CONFIDENTIALITY:

Unfortunately, with humans there is a possibility of compromised governance and confidentiality. However, chatbots are programmed to adhere to policies and retain confidentiality of both the organization and the employee in interaction. Well structured chatbots are supported by basic security protocols to avoid fidelity, such as — identity authentication using login credentials, two-factor authentication, encryption, and self-destructing messages.

ADMINISTRATION, EXTRACTION, AND REPORTING:

Interactions and conversations are reasons that attract the HR guild in enhancing employee experience. However, chatbots also support HR managers by fulfilling administrative operations, extraction of documents and information on-demand and reporting capabilities based on the information gathered from conversations. The output that a chatbot provides is a lot more data-validated, objective than biased, as it occurs to be the case with human agents.

Chatbots are not a mere technological intervention for HR managers. They also influence the bottom line.

CHATBOTS AND ITS ROI

By 2022, chatbots are expected to cut business costs by $8 billion. Chatbots have a direct influence on some of the key metrics that matter to an HR manager. A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study showed that employee experience has the ability to increase ROI anywhere between 1.8x to 3.5x.

Employee experience is a compound of culture, technology, and physical space. Chatbots have the ability to influence all three aspects in different ways.

COST PER CONTACT:

While the number of calls that an employee attends to can reach its pinnacle, the total operational costs can be reduced heavily with the use of chatbots. No matter how efficient the resource managing the calls is, there is always the pressure of time and performance that may act counter-productively in improving cost per contact.

Traditional specialists have suggested some solutions that help in reducing the cost per contact (CPC) — utilizing skill-based routing, interactive voice response and call back feature of IVR. A chatbot, when programmed, is intelligent enough to implement skill-based routing without the involvement of a human. It uses hierarchies and skill tags to perform this task independently. Instead of a callback, chatbots can send reminders and proactive updates on behalf of an associate.

One major cost saving comes from replacement of calls to chats. Chatbots can help businesses save on costs by speeding up response times, freeing up agents for more challenging work, and answering up to 80% of routine questions. Over the years, there is a rise in preference of text-based messaging over calls.

Average abandon time (ABT) metric influences the reduction of CPC. This is highly determined by the skill sets and degree of each skill of your employee. However, the issue of abandon time is reduced to negligible with the use of chatbots. The major reason for this issue is because of the human errors that are bound and imperative by the very nature. With chatbots, that will not be the case.

The other positive effects on cost efficiency with the use of chatbots would reflect as increased employee productivity, reduced time spent on recruitment and no year-on-year hikes for a chatbot.

AREAS WHERE CHATBOTS ARE ALREADY AIDING HR MANAGERS

Chatbots are enabling automation of HR through conversational experiences. It is most applicable to tasks that are repeatable. Some of the areas where chatbots are thriving are:

FAQS & TRAINING:

Employees often run through the long-cycle of time consuming training sessions and coaching mechanisms. A chatbot that is typically made available 24×7 allows employees to get trained in an agile mode and round the clock, adding flexibility to their work life. By consuming these conversational training modules, in the form of FAQs, mini-questionnaires and tests. For instance, to resolve queries and update knowledge in the IT space, IT Helpdesk BOT provides access to the knowledge for employees across the organization. Training bots also take care of administrative aspects like sending reminders and fixing coach appointments.

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT:

It is not just about surveys and SLAs, it is about understanding the employee and making them feel comfortable at their workplace. To achieve great employee experience can’t be just the senior management’s job, engagement happens from everywhere. This becomes true only when every employee is empowered to take action — through a digital self-service environment. This compels an engagement tool to have the ability to communicate with every employee and work towards building a community. An all-rounded employee engagement bot works on appraising peers, create loyalty programs and get the employee to engage through a conversation, exclusive for Slack.

EMPLOYER BRAND:

Building an employer brand is the foundation for good recruitment. Chatbots talk to communities of potential candidates on different platforms, as the organization itself, to attract talent. This does not sound like enterprise bots but actually, do their job. They are found in more gregarious communities like Facebook, Slack, via Mobile and others. They also have the functionality of building the employer brand globally. Chatbots extract data from multiple systems like intranets, CRM applications like Salesforce and LOB application and act as a single point of contact. Employees can perform transactions with their LOB systems. If the data requested is too complex to portray in a chat window, the bot gives a link to the respective dashboard/page in the app/intranet.

RECRUITMENT:

From candidate search engines to applicant tracking systems (ATS), there are many tasks that require automation. While using ATS, the process of parsing played a major role in extracting information. With Chatbots, candidate information is gathered across different channels over a conversation with the candidates. Candidates can also ask the chatbot about questions pertaining to a job description, company culture, and interview process.

ON-BOARDING:

It is not just for the company to draw necessary documents and information using an on-boarding chatbot, it is also for the new employee to ask several questions about the work, reporting manager, rules of the land, missing laptop or ID card and so on. SAP Success Factors has an integrated onboarding chatbot called ‘Onboarding Buddy’ that executes seamless onboarding across multiple offices around the globe and for different newcomers simultaneously. With a chatbot around, employees no longer need to hover around the HR department for every small issue. Chatbots can provide a real-time self-service option to all users. These services could include leave application and management, employee onboarding, setting up reminders, etc.

These are just a few verticals where chatbots are being harnessed for their omnipresence and conversational abilities. The exciting part is that they also have some positive cost implications on the KPIs.

ADOPTION OF CHATBOT USING A BOT PLATFORM — BOTCORE.AI

This just illustrates that HR is evolving fast by anchoring on chatbots that can speak like a human and execute repetitive tasks. To keep pace with such speed, you would have to get started with an environment like a bot builder platform that will provide you with the necessary tools and expertise to develop bots for diverse needs.

Botcore.ai is one such platform that allows you to build versatile chatbots, that will further aid in enhancing engagement and productivity. Apps are fast being replaced by chatbots that can perform repetitive tasks in a conversational interface. Get started with a new chatbot here.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.

A Return To Workplace Checklist For HR Leaders

The post How Chatbots Help HR Managers Improve Employee Experience and Reduce Cost per Contact appeared first on BotCore.

What are enterprise chatbot platforms and what are they for?

Jagan Jami — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 17:30:00 +0000

What Are Enterprise Chatbot Platforms And What Are They For?

“Bots are the new apps” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, “Individual apps are out, Bots are in” says Gartner. While Chatbots are the new technological buzzword in the enterprise world, often less is talked about how bots are built. In this context and as someone who deployed chatbots for Fortune enterprises, start-ups and SMBs we created the below infographic to educate and give you an overview of what are enterprise chatbot platforms and why are they for.

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