Chatbots provide faster self-service in SuccessFactors using Kore.ai

[poornamurthy]

You might have come across Chatbots in different scenarios in your day to day life (Dominos Bot/H&M Bot, Weather Bot & CNN News Bot etc).   The evolution of Artificial Intelligence is now in full swing and chatbots are only a faint splash on a huge wave of progress.  As Christina Malian said, “I think chatbots are the future of engagement between a fan and a brand of celebrity”.

A Chatter Robot (Chatbot) is a type of conversational agent, a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users in natural language via auditory or textual methods

Chatbots are Siri like digital assistance powered by rules and artificial intelligence that can communicate with people, systems and things.

 

How does it work?



 

There are many more chatbot tools available in the current market.  Some of application tools being used in chatbot are, Google Assistant, Dialogue Flows, SAP HCI with SuccessFactors, Kore.ai, Skype, Slack, Messenger etc.    Online chatbots save time into logging in SuccessFactors.  An employee can simply ask either by chatting or voice message on his own leave balance, can apply leave and get approval from manager.  There are more functionalities which are being worked out to bring in Chatbot and I am sure we can achieve this by 2020.

Here is the detailed version of Chatbot.



 

As I said, chatbot can be used with multiple tools through Artificial Intelligence and connecting/integrating with APIs of SAP applications like S/4 HANA, SAP Hybris, SuccessFactors etc

Among all tools of Chatbot, I personally feel “Recast.ai (or) Kore.ai” are more user and admin-friendly tools.  Here is the architecture of Kore.ai integration with cloud/on-premise applications

Kore, one of the first companies to develop a bot platform for enterprises, sees almost no limit to where companies can integrate chatbots, but has identified HR as primary focus area.  Here is the architecture of Kore.ai integration with SuccessFactors Cloud system.

 



 

In SuccessFactors, Chatbots are designed for seamless discussion between Employee and System (SuccessFactors) via automated interaction (standard APIs)

Kore.ai bot is used to configure primarily Time Off related queries for employees without login to SuccessFactors instance.   The queries/chat/voice messages are processed by Kore.ai and accessed through SuccessFactors Employee Central Time Off, Performance Management and Recruitment Modules.

When you logged into Kore.ai either on desktop or mobile using your mail id, it validates against your employee id in SuccessFactors through APIs and Artificial Intelligence and provide the results for all your queries.

Here is one of the example where an employee logged into Kore.ai and open the chat.

 



 

Now when you ask for “What is my current time account balance?”, it asks about your employee ID which been fed in back end to validate your employee ID against your data.

 



Then you provide your employee ID or person ID.

It queries the time account balance in backend system (SuccessFactors instance) and provide the details of time account balance against your ID.

Key Facts and Figures

• $4.5 Billion is expected to be invested in enterprise intelligent assistants by 2021. (Opus Research, 2017)


• By 2022, banks could automate up to 90% of their interactions with chatbots. (Foye, 2017)


• 96% of businesses believe chatbots are here to stay. (Mind browser, 2017)


• By 2020, over 80% of businesses are expected to have some sort of chatbot automation implemented (Business Insider, 2016)


• Chatbots are expected to save banks between $0.50 and $0.70 per interaction.


• 47% of consumers would buy items from a chatbot. (HubSpot, 2017)


• Between 2016 and 2021, we expect the chatbot marketing to grow at a compound rate of 35.2%.

Key Benefits

The basic benefit of Chatbot is higher user satisfaction

• Available 24x7


• Reduces Operational costs by deflecting chats through
  self-service automation


• Improved ROI on human capital with focus on high value interactions


• Improved customer Loyalty & lifetime value through more engaged
  self-service experience.

This can be implemented by web, mobile and messaging application tools  

Great advantage & Aim of Chatbot is “Simplifying Employees Life”

 

[ReenaK]

Very well written. Thanks for sharing such a useful information.

 

[PAWorland]

Great article.  One question however, especially from an end user/employee perspective: once you've logged in, you shouldn't have to provide your employee number.  It's one of those bits of data that employees never remember, but is linked to the user ID.  Shouldn't the bot/AI be able to do this linkage?

 

[poornamurthy]

Hi Paul,

 

I totally agree with you.  Yes. we can avoid Employee ID.  We can use mail id for the first time login to make sure that it is connected to correct employee chatbot.