Will Chatbots Give Jobs the Boot?

As chatbot technology continues to improve and the adoption curve continues to climb, we often hear concerned chatter around the impact that artificial intelligence and automation will have on jobs.

With an already impressive set of skills to add to their CV, chatbots have a very valid place in small and big businesses alike. They allow for more efficient customer service, improved customer engagement, automation of operational tasks and super-speedy data crunching.

But while the benefits of bots for businesses make bold headlines, equally impressive are the benefits that they offer to employees themselves.

Rather than bots giving employees the boot, they help them to do their job better, hopefully making them happier in the process.

Here are a few reasons for employees to love chatbots.

Better onboarding

Well-designed chatbots make for pretty nifty teachers. Rather than being trained by a Manager or colleague, chatbots give employees a less-pressured environment to learn and ask questions. They’re also a whole lot more patient than us humans, so can offer help as often and as long as is needed. Chatbots can be programmed to send modules or refresher courses to specific employees according to their schedules, recognise and reward their training progress and initiate all sorts of additional creative interactive activities to make training a whole lot more engaging and interesting for employees.

Find info in a flash

If there’s one word to describe how chatbots do things, it’s fast. Their ability to crunch through data is superhuman, shaving off a whole lot of time and frustration when it comes to employees needing to sift through hoards of information and allowing them to rather focus more time and energy on other areas of their role.

HR at your fingertips

Instead of filling out forms, questionnaires and surveys, chatbots bring HR to employees’ fingertips, thereby making the usually-cumbersome processes of performance reviews, leave applications or logging grievances a whole lot easier through chat. Chatbots also provide a platform for staff to ask questions or give feedback without worrying about what their colleagues might think of them.

Quality over quantity

The spotlight’s been shining bright on chatbots’ abilities to improve customer service, making it more efficient and pleasant for customers. While this is undeniably true, it relates specifically to short, repetitive customer queries. Chatbots are able to swoop in and save employees from these mundane low-end queries and free them up to focus on high-value customer interactions. This means that customers get speedier resolution of quick queries and better, focused human attention to more complex queries. And happier customers, means happier employees and more job satisfaction.

Improved internal communications

Poor internal communication can be a huge frustration for employees. A study from Prescient Digital Media showed that 31% of employees never use their company intranet, and only 13% use it on a daily basis. These days, corporate messaging tools, such as Slack are replacing intranets and even the number of emails sent. The plethora of chatbots available on Slack is taking internal communication to the next level and keeping employees on top of activities, deadlines, new staff members and other business news.

While there seems to be a great divide between working roles into ‘human’ and ‘machine’, AI technology has in fact introduced an opportunity for a working model that combines the benefits of both for more successful businesses and employees alike.

While chatbot intelligence is on the rapid rise along with the willingness to engage with them, the need for emotional intelligence and social skills remains. So, while chatbots may be able to replicate and replace certain routine roles, there is increased opportunity for roles that require more human qualities.

This strongly relies on well-designed chatbots, carefully thought-out introduction and integration of these new technologies and new thinking and planning around workforce structures and the delegation between human and non-human roles.

According to the 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report , 77% of the more than 10 000 respondents expressed intent to retrain employees to use new technologies or to redesign workplaces for greater use of human skills. Only 20% expressed intent to reduce jobs due to increased workflow automation.

The rise of chatbots does not mean pending doom and gloom for employees, but rather, an opportunity for humans and machines to come together and conquer.