Added value, more sales thanks to chatbots? – Many people immediately think of a classic chatbot in e-commerce. However, e-commerce is just one of many areas of application in which chatbots are possible.
Chatbots can also be successfully implemented in personnel management (human resources) and lead to budget savings here.

Studies show that chatbots could save up to 8 billion dollars a year by 2022. This is a huge increase over the $20 million employers were expected to save in 2017-2018. (Source: http://fortune.com/2017/05/10/chatbots-business-billions-savings/)

In the following, I will show you various scenarios of how a chatbot can relieve your HR department and what you should look out for.

The job advertisement:

In most companies, it is the intern’s job to publish new job advertisements. They must consult with the individual departments and team leaders in advance to find out what type of position is to be filled. This can now all be done by a bot. Team leaders can submit their employee requests directly to the bot. The bot may then ask a few organizational questions and the chatbot takes over the job posting. If desired, the bot can also clarify internal questions regarding the approval of the job before publication.

The applicant search:

Instead of searching through countless job postings, job seekers are asked by a bot about their skills, experience and preferences. The bot then suggests suitable vacancies. The applicant then has another opportunity to ask questions about the individual tenders and the company in general. And finally, he can apply directly via the bot by simply uploading his documents to the bot and answering a few formal questions.
Applicants are therefore only shown jobs that suit them. As a result, companies only receive applications from candidates who are suitable for the position. Furthermore, the bot can even work through the documents and pass on all the necessary information, such as professional experience or qualifications, to the HR employee.
Chatbots are now even able to process natural language. You can already conduct the first selection interview, which involves a few soft skills and formal questions, yourself.
There are already the first bots that can also find out the mood of the user and can therefore tell exactly whether the user is excited, extroverted, introverted or shy, for example.

The onboarding:

A good induction is usually the foundation for successful cooperation between employees and their superiors. But this takes a lot of time. Especially in large corporations, there are countless rules to follow, registrations and applications for individual programs, etc. My colleague, Armin Herbsthofer, had exactly this experience at Swissloop. The solution – a chatbot. New employees join the company every week, who are initially trained by an intelligent chatbot. The chatbot already knows which areas the new employee will be working in, gives them all the necessary information and completes the registration in the required systems. If the new employee has any questions, they can contact the bot directly and it searches for the right information from a linked database.

Employee management:

Chatbots take over the management of employees and answer their questions. Possible use cases include the organization and approval of vacations, expense reports or general inquiries that employees have for the HR department.
This type of employee management has two major advantages. On the one hand, there are of course time savings for employees in the HR departments. On the other hand, users receive their answers around the clock and are not tied to the working hours of the HR department.

Employee training:

Don’t forget to invest in your employees too. This also includes further training. You can ensure this in the traditional way with stationary courses or online seminars or in an innovative and interesting way for your employees with an intelligent Chafbot. The bot guides the employees through the training program and asks them questions. At the same time, employees can ask their questions on the topic directly to the bot and receive an answer. At the end, the bot can tell whether the “student” has passed the training or not. The answers to questions posed by users serve as the basis for this.

The options presented here are just a small selection of what bots can do. But don’t forget to check and train the bots regularly. Bots in particular, which are supported by AI, are usually programmed in such a way that they continue to develop and learn on their own, so to speak. However, human resources are always needed to ensure that the bot carries out the desired activities in the interests of the company.

I hope the use cases presented have given you an idea of Chafbots in Human Resources. If you have any further ideas, questions or experiences, please write to me(sophie@hundertmark.ch). I am happy to advise and support you in the strategy, realization and implementation of your chatbot.