How Does Conversational AI Increase Employee Productivity?

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Do you think Employee Productivity plays a vital role in up-scaling businesses? If yes, we are on the same page. Read ahead, as there is more to it.

Productivity is the key to a successful business and it is what managers today are the most concerned about. Better productivity churns out better results, which is what businesses aim to carry off.

But, do you wonder how a team or employee’s productivity affects business? Let’s find out!

Everything boils down to productivity. From the first man marching to the last one standing, it is on everyone’s part to contribute to making businesses prosper.

Having employees with good productivity (if not the expected) is a boon for the company as they bring  in better business outcomes. Meeting targets in time, better customer experience, smarter outcomes,  and transparency  are all the ingredients you need to bake the productivity cake. Accurate, isn't it?

Employees Losing Productivity: Why and How?

We’ve all been there! Poor operations, bad culture, unrealistic workload, poor communication and more factors have been taking down the productivity of at least one in three of us.

I am sure you have been under the wheel at some point, feeling undervalued even after breaking mountains in your workplace. This boils down to a lot of things but mainly the ill-structured or ill-planned workflow, because of which you keep wandering looking for the right way to meet your targets.

Let us have a quick look at some of the major reasons why employees are losing productivity.

Reasons:

1. Multi-Tasking:

According to a study, multitasking leads to as much as a 40% drop in productivity and the employees who multitask make 50% more errors.

Source: Startling Statistics on How Multitasking is REALLY Hurting Your Business | Smart Simple Marketing

I am sure you won’t deny that! In a nutshell, multitasking is just switching between 2 tasks as in-fact your brain cannot focus on two things at a time. Business owners expect employees to work on multiple projects simultaneously and deliver more. They do deliver more but it definitely puts down the quality.

2. Stress:

Stress is one scary factor that leads to the downfall of a good employee. It's a result of a bunch of workplace familiar events. Let's dig deeper.

You have 10 minutes! Deliver a package at 10 different locations that are at a distance of 5 miles each. Also, no rewards even if you do it magically. That’s insanely unrealistic, right?

It's a perfect example of how Unrealistic Deadlines, Lack of Appreciation and Excessive Workload sum up to result in low productivity.

3. Unplanned Work Structure:

Ill-structured workflow and absence of standard operating procedures (SOPs) are a definite harm to productivity. Let’s see how!

When help desk employees have to attend to repetitive issues and requests, procedural guidelines are a must to explain how best to address these issues. These guidelines not only make the workflow uniform, but also instills confidence in the employees, who as a result resolve issues better and quicker. Without proper operating structure, the help desk becomes more prone to repetitive human errors.

4. Toxic Workplace Culture:

Bang! You’ve been hit with it and so have most of us!

The feeling of toxicity in your workplace environment, no sense of belonging and people walking around manipulating the system to climb up their ladders easily. It is something we all have witnessed and it kills the enthusiasm within.

Bad Culture is like the Carpenter Ants that eat logs of wood gradually and leave behind just sawdust at the end. Well, it's worse with businesses as you would not even realize it unless it's close to the end.

5. Pandemic:

It has hit the world hard! I bet you won’t deny that it has affected your productivity as well.

Think about this for a moment, we started working from home a long time back and still it doesn’t seem to have an end to it. We attend more meeting in a week than we used to in a month. For product delivery based businesses, tracking every order and keeping the errands in line has become a pain. We are tied to a couch or chair at home and it has been gradually killing your productivity in some or the other way.

Yes, some of you won't agree as it has become a habit and you are getting back on track. Fair enough, but you are still not as productive with the routine work.

Cost of Losing Productivity

It costs businesses a lot. Let us be assured of that for a start!

A study by Health Advocate shows that there are about one million employees who are suffering from low productivity due to stress, which costs companies $600 dollars per worker every single year.

Source: 9 Reasons Why Employees Have Low Productivity (kanbanize.com)

An impact on the monetary structure of a company is a result of other small non-monetary factors. Unproductive employees are often laid off by managers to reduce such futile investments. It definitely reduces cost, but indirectly harms the company.

So let’s get down to business and see how you can increase employee productivity.

Remedies to Increase Employee Productivity

We have to get this right! We have already discussed it and it's worth repeating that Organized Workflow and Better Engagement Strategy are the two most effective ways to improve productivity.

But before I share the remedy with you, I want you to think of it once and have an answer ready. Companies today are exploring modern technology to help alleviate issues associated with productivity loss. But it's not a magic wand that can fix all your problems. So companies need to really invest in not just implementing technology but also ways to incorporate proper change management.

One of the helpful technologies companies are investing in to boost their productivity is the Conversational AI.

Let's get down to the nuts and bolts of Conversational AI.

No Code - Free Conversationl AI

What is Conversational AI?

Conversational AI is a system that helps you interact with machines, applications etc as if you were speaking to your fellow human. It uses a natural language processing (NLP) algorithm to process your interaction. Chatbots and virtual agents are built on conversational AI systems that can interact using machine learning, natural language processing and the required data used to interpret user’s inputs and present the best suited solutions.

You recently bought a new phone and you are already facing multiple issues. You can simply chat with a technical support chatbot that can either provide steps to solve your problem yourself or set up a confirmed replacement for your device in seconds. Awesome, right?

Today, you may find chatbots all around you, helping you with everything from your daily functions to the issues you face.

Why is Conversational AI best suited for companies?

Before we jump onto the answer to this question, let's answer another question - Why are we looking for these solutions?

The ultimate driving force for a business is theemployee experience. Businesses aim at catering a swift and smooth experience to employees who work hard to bring more and more business. Sadly, it isn’t coming through that well.

This void can be filled by effective conversations and structured workflows. Up the ladder, chatbots, machines and smart applications join the humans in the loop of conversations. A perfect solution for a productive yet organized business model is a smart mix of virtual and in-person conversations. The need to invest in virtualizing our processes is necessary for all sections - HR, IT, Helpdesks, Sales, etc.

Lets now jump right into our primary question - Why is Conversational AI best suited for companies?

Chatbots and Virtual Agents don’t just get you the refund for the burnt pizza you received, hang on, there is a lot more to it. You can address them as intelligent individuals who help you with a myriad of tasks before you can even say Jack Robinson. I bet you just tried saying that!

Here are the top 5 reasons why Conversational AI is the best solution for improving workplace productivity:

1. Provides the human-touch with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) 

They use advanced analytics like intent-recognition to interpret the user’s inputs better and serve them accordingly.

Ideally, in the help desk scenario, users expect the support agent to resolve their issues consistently with compassion, but we know it’s not possible for humans to maintain consistency all the time. As a remedy, Virtual Agents can keep the process in-line with the user’s expectations with the cool technologies it is born of.

2. Automates operations and workflows to handle repetitive tasks

Traditionally, most of human effort has been tied up with dull routine tasks that take away the attention from the actual high productivity and business centric tasks.

Example

As an IT support agent, you have multiple errands to run. You know this for a fact that some of them are just regular issues and the others are the high priority ones that affect the business and need your attention.

Virtual Agents are just the right thing for you! You can feed-in a sequence of responses, sit back and relax. The bot, being smart and obedient, executes the process efficiently without any human interference.

3. Analyzes work patterns and designs automated workflows

You have it covered when it’s Artificial Intelligence, as you don't have to feed in the instructions. It's powered with the ability to learn and perform intuitively. It learns how you work and improves itself accordingly.

4. Helps prioritize actions and build workflow models

Workflow Models or Response Templates help the virtual agents  react to similar instances more efficiently in future. You no longer need to manually prioritize the actions required to perform a particular task.

All you need to do is set the categories according to the types of issues and it takes care of the micro steps that go into it. Amazing, isn't it?

5. Provides easier access to all forms of information

Users, when they talk to a support agent, often request for some form of information. This information is often available from sources at different locations or portals.

Conversational AI chatbots make it no sweat and simple by efficiently finding the information and delivering it to the user instantly.

6. Offer enhanced user-experience with a modern user interface.

The look and feel of the Chatbot UI are important, but what’s more satisfying? It definitely has to be the ‘usability’, and hands down, these bots are very simple and handy.

Intuitive options, consistent tone, quick response time and accurate solutions are the factors that improve User Experience while and after talking to an AI assistant.

Areas Where Conversational AI Is Being Deployed and How It Helps

Let us have a look at which organizational areas does Conversation AI fit in and how does it help improve productivity.

1. Workplace Operations

Conversational AI can help automate the routine tasks, manage multiple workflows together, schedule meetings, and even send timely reminders.

Apart from this, some AI Chatbots can even generate reports based on the collected data for self-evaluation and improvement. They organize the work to make it more streamlined and systematic, which in-turn increases productivity.

2. Human Resources (HR)

HR Employees have a hard time going through every employee’s data, sending reminders, setting up meetings, organizing events and mostly responding to employees’ queries.

Not anymore! Conversational AI assistants act like HR employees who are available 24x7 to organize and handle most of these tasks. From answering trivial employees’ questions (eg. What is my leave balance?) to organizing events, reminders and data, everything is sorted and organized.

3. Employee Support

Well, you have to keep the swords of your warriors sharp. Keeping up with employees’ needs and making sure nothing affects their productivity is important.

You (as an employee) need a new asset or the old one needs a fix, you need access to a portal, or you have other IT related issues. With conversational AI assistants, you can simplify the support process for employees. They can simply report their issues to the AI Chatbot and get them resolved in seconds.

4. Customer Service and Support

We all are customers to some or the other services or products. We always expect the support agent to be available all the time, and provide us quick and accurate solutions. I bet you agree that it’s not completely possible for humans.

Well, Conversational AI Chatbots make it simple by taking in customer queries, retrieving necessary information and getting the action done efficiently in no time. It isn’t just about resolving issues, but also about other errands like setting up meetings, sending reminders, creating tickets and generating customer-centric reports.

5. Productive and satisfied employees 

Enabling your employees to solve their IT issues themselves in a slack channel via bot leads them to solve their issues then and there itself and continue with their work.  

For employees, this eliminates the frustration that comes with the labyrinthine way of getting an IT issue resolved like sending multiple emails, redirects to different SMEs, etc., Employee self-service also let's help desk agents focus on resolving the more pressing IT issues at hand. 

6. Sales and Marketing

Lead generation, customer-fishing and retaining customers are hectic jobs and a major portion of it can be done by a virtual agent. This will take away the less important jargon and allow the human agents to focus on bringing in more business.

A chatbot can hit some great shots by analyzing the market, generating reports and creating process improvement plans. Apart from that, it collects data from customers efficiently and stores their feedback to future enhancements.

For the marketing part, analyzing customer’s needs and sharing the relevant information about the product, timely sending newsletters and upgrading related reminders for continued services, and more. 

Conclusion

By now I bet you have realised that Conversation AI can do their bit to help employees and businesses  with increasing productivity. It’s easy to deploy, easy to use and definitely easy to manage. By using these AI powered chatbots or virtual agents, you can monitor workplace operations, scan through processes, pick out flaws, and ultimately streamline processes to improve productivity as a whole.  

Let’s see what Workativ has to offer here.

Workativ Assistant: What does it offer?

Workativ Assistant is a SaaS based no-code platform that combines conversational ai and workflow automation to help companies build an efficient virtual agent with RPA capabilities to resolve repetitive workplace issues and service requests 

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, there is a lot more to it.

Don’t waste those valuable minutes anymore! Get right into it and witness the productivity scaling up by signing up for a FREE trial at workativ.com today!

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