Call centers bearing the brunt of the Rising costs of hiring? AI, Chatbots, and Voicebots are the answer to the problem of rising costs of recruitment and maintaining hotlines
Increases to the minimum wage, low unemployment, difficulty recruiting the ideal candidates – these are just some of the factors influencing the increase in costs at companies’ call-center departments. Each year, Customer service become increasingly costly. Thankfully, there are now solutions that increase your consultants productivity, or take care of common problems that waste resources needlessly. Besides facilitating productivity, Chatbot can also help in recruiting agents.
According to a Forrester Research report, 87% of CEOs want to modernize their staff using artificial intelligence. McKinsey experts, on the other hand,point specifically to employment issues and estimate that about 22% of HR functions are ready for automation. Record keeping, employee attendance and payroll are the easiest to automate, followed by archiving and reporting issues. HR departments can thus delegate part of their work to HR Chatbots, can deal with the more important strategic planning and building employee relations, where the human factor is key.
Virtual Advisors, such as Chatbots and Voicebots, are most often mentioned in the context of customer service, and are a huge support for teams, allowing companies to optimize costs. However, it is worth emphasizing their capabilities in internal processes – recruitment, implementation of new employees and periodic training.
Relieving the hotline through automation by only 15 – 20% of recurring problems really lowers employment costs.
Many international brands have already introduced automation solutions, whether in hotlines, forms or messengers. The goal is to support consultants – not to replace them. Their knowledge and soft skills guarantee high-quality service, i.e the customer’s experience. Artificial intelligence supports consultants by performing repetitive activities that do not add more value to the company, e.g. do not increase conversions or sell new products or services. Companies are currently struggling with problems related to the so-called employee’s market – there are not enough candidates willing to work; they often have high expectations; and their salaries are growing ahead of the market. All these issues are particularly important, especially in the case of mass employment in large corporate Call Centers or outsourcing companies. This is where Virtual Assistants – Chatbots and Voice Assistants – Voicebots are the solution to the problem.
Chatbots, which have grown in use , communicate with clients using text-based interfaces. Voicebots, (Voice Chatbots), thanks to advances in voice recognition technology, are able to understand the voice commands of users and respond to queries both in voice and text.
Omni-channel agent consoles minimize switching between screens and increase productivity
The screen on which the agent works, but also the intuitiveness of a call center’s software have a significant impact on productivity.
A few years ago, agents worked on a maximum of 2 channels – usually, a hotline and a form. Today, voice, text, social, or video channels may be running with simultaneous monitoring of a customer’s shopping cart or payment processing.
When considering the automation a hotline, it is worth cooperating with a software vendor who will provide consultants with an appropriate tool for handling inquiries and viewing Chatbot or Voicebot calls. Omni-channel Support is a multifunctional interface – CRM, customer card, store statuses, Call Center, forms, chat – all in one place, on one screen. Consultants no longer need to use different programs and click between screens. Fearing integration, companies still often needlessly use multiple systems. While streamlining workflows in one channel, it’s also a good time to implement solutions in other customer contact channels.
Faster onboarding of consultants
Millennials, but others notwithstanding, are at the core of today’s hotline teams, and often reject training through traditional manuals, expect when content is engaging and attractive, often video, along with intuitive means for searching a company’s resources. This forces companies to present their knowledge and key information in a different way – no longer in the form of long scripts or PDF documents, where it takes time and patience to find the answer to a question. Dedicated applications that allow employees to have instant answers to their FAQs, intelligent search engines powered by systems such as Conversational AI or semantic search technology guarantee fast onboarding, knowledge acquisition and may help in lower turnover of consultants.
Automation in the recruitment process partially neutralizes the problem of rotation
With rising wages( including base salaries), HR departments have their hands full. Between, hiring new employees and constant care for the rest of the team, theirs is an extremely time-consuming job. Particularly, in Call Center, where many consultants are needed. Presently, many are students, and most simply do not want to work on a phone line.
Nowadays, young candidates learn differently, quickly losing interest and expecting immediate results. So, how can InteliWISE’s HR Chatbots help HR professionals make life easier and more rewarding for their employees?
1. Conducting through the documentation necessary for the recruitment process.
New employees need to fill in basic documents necessary for employment, such as tax forms, and sometimes also a number of other agreements, such as confidentiality agreements. Chatbots / Recruitment Voicebots can guide candidates through all the formalities and answer the majority of questions about how to fill in the forms if there is any ambiguity.
2. Introduction to company policy.
A significant part of the onboarding process involves introducing employees to the company’s policies – documents related to human resources policy concerning holidays or standard operating procedures for a new team of employees. Thanks to Virtual Assistants, an employee can save time and ask about any, sometimes banal, question to the application – instead of a colleague or human resources person.
3. Getting acquainted with the history and goals of the company.
Getting to know the achievements of the company and the team, and their future projects and goals, are critical parts of the recruitment process. Employees may ask questions about the place of their team in the company’s structure and start their positions with perspective.
4. Managing working time and changes in the company.
Chatbots or Voicebots can also check the progress of employees during their onboarding or checking on their expected knowledge about projects. They can also be used as a virtual time clock, e.g. to allow for faster shift check-ins, via a mobile device.
5. Questionnaire and training.
Virtual Assistants are also useful in surveys or for retraining employees – they can, for example, anonymously poll employees about internal processes or projects, or initiate quizzes refreshing knowledge on security or data protection issues.
More consultants does not mean better results – increased productivity via automation of several processes at once is the surest way to maintain cost margins at help centers.
AI will accelerate onboarding of employees. It is the long-awaited update to the days of long PDFs and manuals and scripts – a new generation of search engines instantly connects databases and suggests solutions and answers to questions troubling employees. Virtual Assistant is an effective web self-service solution that increases efficiency both within the company and in customer service by reducing the number of repetitive queries. AI allows you to modernize your HR department and make full use of your real investments in HR infrastructure.
Interested? Find out what we can do for your company.
