By Vasudeva Rao Munnaluri, RVP India & SAARC, Zendesk
It has been a challenging year for businesses in India and around the world as the economic downturn forced many to seek ways to achieve more with fewer resources. Teams are being asked to ramp up productivity while keeping costs down amidst economic uncertainty. And employees are struggling to get the help they need, when they need it. Only 24% of employees in Indian organisations experience high levels of wellbeing at their workplaces, a recent study by Forrester and Indeed revealed. More than three-quarters of all the workers in Indian businesses reported low levels of wellbeing.
When employee wellbeing isn’t prioritised, it can have a huge bearing on businesses. According to Gallup, poor employee wellbeing costs organisations around the globe an estimated $322 billion through increased medical costs, productivity losses, and high turnover. Businesses are recognising the need in improving the employee experience and 86% of Indian organisations say it is a top priority for them. While AI has the potential to modernise and simplify how productive teams can be, the skills gap in AI is impeding its adoption.
Given breakthroughs like ChatGPT and new applications for AI, many businesses find that the type of AI they need has been unavailable for internal service teams. That’s because many solutions aren’t purpose-built for IT and HR teams, or are slow and expensive, requiring heavy IT spend, lengthy implementation steps, and highly specialised resources.
Many other technologies are designed to work on only narrow parts of the employee experience operations, which often frustrate employees. For example, the most important and repetitive tasks of reaching out to HR, IT and finance teams requires employees to jump through hoops, where they end up spending more time than necessary. Resolving these issues faster leaves employees free to spend more time on meaningful, business-critical tasks without the frustration of constantly following up on their queries.
How AI improves employee experience
Offer fast and efficient support: Resolving employee queries quickly and efficiently can be challenging. Given the resource crunch, it requires businesses to pivot towards intelligent technologies. In fact, 72% of Indian businesses agree that they will need new employee experience software to adapt to changes in the market over the next 12 months, according to Zendesk’s CX Trends Report 2023. AI-powered bots immediately understand which type of issue employees are facing and can solve common issues without an IT or HR agent ever getting involved. However, when the issues are more complex, AI guides IT and HR teams to solve it faster. With smooth bot-to-human handoffs, the AI gathers key information about employees, including the issue type and important employee context. This makes issue resolution seamless. AI-driven EX solutions can also route and prioritise sensitive requests to the right people, like workplace harassment claims or payroll questions, so only the right agents are working on the right types of issues.
Make resources easily available: A great way to improve productivity lies in helping teams save time by documenting key processes and providing answers to commonly asked questions. Generative AI-powered chatbots offer a self-service option and can serve employees 24×7. When built on large data-sets, these solutions provide improved messaging and understand employee needs, removing the need for people to train them. They can be quite useful in tackling issues that aren’t too complex. For example, employees can use generative-AI powered bots to get answers to common issues like, ‘How can I reset my password?’ or ‘Can you help me remove a virus from my laptop?’ or ‘Why can’t I access my WiFi?’. AI-driven EX solutions analyse and identify knowledge gaps and instantly create articles that IT and HR admins can approve.
Data-driven decision making: One of the great things about AI is its ability to accurately analyse the data it’s fed. AI-powered Ex solutions do just that. They can sort through vast amounts of employee data to extract valuable insights, arming IT and HR admins with instant and precise information. AI facilitates real-time decision making with valuable information that helps businesses understand their employees better. This ensures businesses can ramp up collaboration across departments, identify areas of opportunity, and continuously improve EX. For example: One of the most challenging tasks organisations face is getting their employees to learn the new tech stacks that are being adopted. This also means that employees are constantly reaching out to IT help desks for queries. With AI-powered EX solutions, learning becomes seamless. These technologies guide internal teams on how best to solve employee issues in real time, it uses AI-powered insights to improve team coaching and training to ensure onboarding is quicker and more efficient.
If businesses are merely aiming for employee satisfaction, then they’re missing the mark. Employee experience is important because they are ultimately responsible for developing products and services, building customer relationships, and solving business challenges. At a time when smaller teams are asked to do more, making employees’ life easier and treating them well can help businesses ensure the demanding new environment doesn’t affect their productivity.
With the right technological pivots, businesses can improve EX so employees feel supported and equipped to work more efficiently and effectively. This is good for businesses and employee retention. Aside from losing valuable top talent, finding employees who are a good fit for your company and hiring them can be time-consuming. If businesses deliver great employee experiences, it increases their retention rates, improves internal processes and boosts overall employee satisfaction.