AI simplifies remote training and onboarding so much that the conversational AI market is predicted to reach $1.3 billion by 2025, according to Cognizant.
Furthermore, as per Google Trends, the interest in chatbots has skyrocketed by 5x over the last five years:
Finally, CNBC claims that 75-90% of queries are projected to be handled by bots by 2022. Clearly, chatbots are redefining the present for sales, support, and marketing. But what about the future? One area of application where AI chatbots are slowly and steadily gaining momentum is accelerated chatbot adoption due to the ongoing pandemic–remote training and onboarding.
If you’re unsure about how chatbots can revolutionize the remote training and onboarding sector, consider the following data by Allegis:
- 58% of candidates were comfortable interacting with AI and recruitment chatbots in the early stages of the application process.
- 66% – were comfortable with AI and chatbots taking care of interview scheduling and preparation
If you’re wondering about how AI chatbots can be used to take your remote training and onboarding process to the next level, you’ve come to the right place. Keep reading.
Top 5 Applications and Benefits of AI Chatbots in Remote Training and Onboarding
1. Guides Agents through the Onboarding and Training Workflow
“By 2022, 35% of organizations will turn the job application process into a simple conversation by utilizing conversational user experience and natural language processing in their recruiting process.” – Gartner
The biggest challenge for any recruit is to offer customers helpful information within seconds. Since different customer requests will have varied protocols that need to be followed, having an AI chatbot to guide the agent can help. Here are some of the ways in which you can leverage a conversational bot to get agents up-to-speed with customer workflows:
- Provides contextual assistance to customers, empowering agents with up-to-date and relevant knowledge
- Assists agents in troubleshooting the customer’s issue, gaining a better understanding of the problem, and performing the next course of action
- Allows the agent to ask the right set of questions sequentially for instant and effective query resolution
The learning: AI chatbots can help agents get familiarized with the new setup and protocols relatively quickly, without the chaos and confusion that a recruit typically goes through. This can enhance the employee’s and the customer’s experience and boost satisfaction for both entities.
2. Streamlines and Scales the Training and Onboarding Process, While Reducing Costs
According to research by Glassdoor, “A strong onboarding process improves new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%. Further research claims that chatbot solution allows businesses to recruit 33% faster and screen 85% more resumes with the same budget while spending 50% less per hire.
The moral of the story? You can think of AI chatbots as an “all-in-one” digital tool that empowers agents to self-serve. In simpler words, these bots can provide them with all the resources and go-to knowledge and assets. This ultimately helps:
- Answer basic questions by employees:
- Be in the know about company news, HR news, etc.–a boon if agents are working remotely. This also boosts employee engagement levels:
- Lower internal dependencies and boosts collaboration in a remote work environment.
Pro tip: Invest in a bot that integrates well with a wide range of collaboration and video conferencing tools. This can enhance internal collaboration and enable agents to work with speed.
- Shorten the go-live time for new agents
- Reduce costs and human effort to onboard agents with speed and accuracy
- Connect better with senior management and other teams, despite working virtually:
The learning: A streamlined and comprehensive onboarding process can boost the new employee’s morale and empower them to self-serve. For best results, make sure to integrate your chatbot into your HRM tool so that you can automate key HR-related tasks, such as gathering joining information, and providing information about organizational policies, FAQs, and so on.
3. Automates Complex Back-End Processes and Repetitive Tasks
Did you know that employees typically need to complete over 50+ activities during their onboarding period? Naturally, completing all these manually can eat up valuable work hours. This is where AI chatbots genuinely shine.
These bots can:
- Automate complicated back-end processes (think: Searching through a vast database to collect relevant data quickly, updating field values, updating ticket properties at every stage of the query resolution, identifying canned responses to insert into the interaction, etc.):
- Automate the delivery and receipt of mountains worth of paperwork.
- Take up the tedious and repetitive manual work, free up your agent’s time, and allow them to complete complex onboarding tasks effortlessly and well on time:
- Improve agent productivity since recruits will not have to jump between tools to complete the required setup.
- Lower the chances of human error while completing the training and onboarding process.
The learning: AI chatbots can automate complex tasks and back-end processes, thereby allowing agents to focus on more important tasks such as establishing a rapport with their colleagues, tending to unhappy customers within the first few weeks, and so on.
4. Retrains CX Agents Efficiently and Professionally
Every CX-focused organization knows that CX strategies are dynamic and perceptible to change with time. This is why agent re-training becomes a necessity. Instead of manually briefing your team time and again, it helps set up a knowledge base that can be centrally accessed by one-and-all.
In other words, you can integrate your knowledge base within your agent-facing AI chatbot so that agents can access real-time knowledge at the click of a button. Here are some best practices to keep in mind:
- Make sure to document changes to the CX strategy using different content formats such as email, video, article, etc., to make it interesting and easy to digest:
- Integrate touch-points such as document libraries, wikis, FAQs, and websites to provide in-depth information instantly and without any friction. By offering access to all the essential data in a centralized place, employees can save valuable time and effort and get to the task seamlessly:
- Ensure that your agent-facing chatbot is easily accessible to agents on the go:
- Gamify the training process to make it fun, interactive, and engaging.
The learning: Re-training agents is a time-consuming, costly affair if done manually. It makes business sense to automate the training process and use AI bots as digital training and re-training assistants.
5. Provides Real-Time Insights into Past Interactions for Enhanced Agent Productivity
“One in five new hires are unlikely to recommend an employer to a friend or family member after their new hire onboarding experience.” – Digitate
The importance of providing a high-quality, fast, and efficient remote training and onboarding experience cannot be stressed enough. This will not only boost employee referrals but also enhance employee happiness. So the real question then becomes how you can offer a consistent and rich employee experience.
By using chatbots that can:
- Provide in-depth reports into past interactions and self-learn what’s working and (what’s not).
- Send open-ended qualitative surveys as well as polls and gather critical employee feedback in real-time to understand their pain points and problems:
What’s more, since employees provide their feedback via chat (and not forms), it ensures maximum participation and transparency during the feedback process. Furthermore, HR managers can keep updating the chatbot questions and capitalize on relevant feedback. Consider the following example for inspiration:
- Drive sentiment analysis essentially captures enormous amounts of unstructured, qualitative data in real-time, including opinions, feedback, and performance reviews.
The learning: AI chatbots can engage in powerful predictive analytics and throw light on important metrics such as employee engagement and productivity. More importantly, these bots can onboard employees 24×7, making them a valuable treasure trove of employee-centric information. Finally, they allow employees to complete tasks and surveys at their convenience, prioritizing employee wellbeing.
Closing Thoughts
Informal. Inconsistent. Reactive.
According to a third of employees, these are the three issues that plague most remote training and onboarding systems, a third of employees, as per research. An AI chatbot can address all these issues cost-effectively and efficiently.
To wrap up, here are the top 5 ways in which chatbots can raise your remote training and onboarding capabilities:
1. Guides agents through the onboarding and training workflow
2. Streamlines and scales the training and onboarding process while reducing costs
3. Automates complex back-end processes and repetitive tasks
4. Retrains CX agents efficiently and professionally
5. Provides real-time insights into past interactions for enhanced agent productivity
All in all, these chatbots lay the foundation for strategic and structured remote training and onboarding of employees. How so? By focusing on delivering results for the “people” instead of solely driving endless paperwork. This becomes vital, especially if you are onboarding and training agents in a remote environment–without any physical support or assistance from co-workers.
So invest in a robust chatbot tool that offers 360-degree integration and collaboration capabilities, acclimatizing your new agents to your brand and culture and their roles and responsibilities the way they deserve it.
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