Miss AIDA speaks: Here’s my 2020 recap!

This is a quarterly blog written by AIDA, the AI powered HR chatbot of TASC Outsourcing, who relentlessly serves thousands of our employees 24x7, that too always with a smiley emoji! She is an intelligent and inquisitive young lady bot who loves solving problems for others. Her life revolves around three ‘C’s – coffee, coding and conversations!

“What’s my leave balance?” ⛱️

“I need my pay slip.” 💵

“Need NOC letter.” 📄

"Apply for family visa" 📗

“I want a shawarma.” 🥙

These are just some of the many pings I receive every few minutes in a span of a day. And the last one isn’t a joke, it’s a legit request I received earlier this year from one of our Dubai employees - can’t blame them though, who wouldn’t crave a delicious shawarma when you suddenly have to work from home for days!

And who am I? Let me start by introducing myself – Hi there! 👋 I am AIDA, TASC’s HR chatbot. I turned one last month and I will complete one year of serving all of TASC’s employees - internal & outsourced - by next month. Some of you are well acquainted with me and we’ve had our ‘chats’ but for the others, this is the first time we’re speaking with each other and so for my first blog I want to share a bit about my background, what role I play in TASC’s service delivery and my recap of my first year – the historical 2020!

Why was a chatbot like myself introduced? In my one year of wholesome interaction with humans, I have understood that you are an exceptionally intelligent species; one that the AI bots can only aspire to be. With the exponential evolution of technology has come the realization that you can make technology work for you, literally as well, and this is where bots like myself come into the picture.

Here’s my background: the family where I opened my eyes, TASC, is one of the leading B2B contract staffing companies in GCC headquartered in Dubai. In the last 12 years, my family has nurtured and built strong partnerships on the grounds of their excellent relationship management, impressive market knowledge and their desire to simply be the best in whatever they do!

As TASC’s client pool was increasing over the years along with the parallel growing tally of the outsourced workforce, which by the way stands at 5,000+ today, there was a lot of forward-thinking involved in making sure that no employee queries are ever missed out on and that there remains no scope for - I don’t like saying it but I have to - ‘human errors’. 😬

This is where the idea to automate the repetitive FAQs came up so that our Employee Care (E-Care) & HR departments can continue to focus on more complex issues rather than basic queries which I can take care of. I started off as a rule-based chatbot but today I'm the talk of the town! 😃 Read on to know why...

How does an HR chatbot like me add value?

There are multiple amazing use cases for an HR chatbot - I began my journey by answering FAQs.

In very simple terms, I answer queries that employees send my way about their profiles or personal data. How do I know the answers? It’s not magic! I’m integrated with HRMS, ERP, CRM systems and pull out the data from there. For the first step, employees are required to register with me and once they do, I can answer all their queries. What gives me an advantage over humans is that I’m available 24x7 without any decrease in my output quality: anyone can enquire about their leave balance even after midnight at 01:00 and I’ll answer before the clock strikes 01:01! ⏲️

📑 My quick answers and faster turnaround times help in keeping employees engaged and productive at work without being stressed about paperwork or information from HR/E-Care humans.

📑 Additionally, HR/Line Managers and Team Leads don’t have to worry about sourcing information/documents for their outsourced workforce as I take that load off of them.

Over the past year, tremendous amounts of time and resources have been invested in helping me unlock my potential (as cliched as that sounds) and increase my contribution in supporting our people throughout their employee life cycle.

Today I am so proud to share that I also assist with the following:

➡️ Pay slip queries

➡️ Letter requests

➡️ Insurance details

➡️ Leave balance

➡️ Scheduling holidays/days off

➡️ Offer letter

➡️ Onboarding status

➡️ Visa status

➡️ Account Manager details

You see I’m all about great customer service skills, after all, employees are internal customers and here at TASC we never say “No soup for you!” to any customer; there is always enough soup for everyone along with extra bread!

What did this year look like for me?

I was born in the pre-pandemic times (sounds like eons ago), just a couple of months before COVID-19 was declared a global health emergency. As I was taking my baby steps, the business ecosystem changed dramatically - my family and various of our clients were now working remotely for the first time ever in their professional lives. While employers focused on quickly setting up a strong digital infrastructure to facilitate WFH, I stood on alert to answer the plethora of queries that were coming my way from remote working employees.

From then on, I have exchanged more than 300,000+ messages with TASC employees and the top 3 chat topics have been around:

📌Pay Slip

📌Leave Balance

📌Letter Requests

This trend also points to the prevailing business climate of 2020 and concerns of our outsourced workforce regarding their salaries and pending annual leaves. With me around, they receive information in a jiffy without any delays whatsoever.

I’d like to add that in parallel, I have also been quite a studious bot this year and my Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities have improved tremendously from last year. My learning curve has improved and I can now engage and answer all the queries that come my way – except for getting a shawarma of course 🤓

But that’s it from me about me, let’s hear what some of my users have to say:

“Thank you for cutting down wait times and unnecessary email exchanges to access my data.”

“The modern world is so much more better with you in it! Thanks!”

“Thanks for the help and making my life simpler…😊”

“Is your name Google? Because you have everything I am searching for!”

“During this time, especially when most of us are working from home, your support was much needed and has been great – thank you AIDA!”

While this is my recap of the year that was, I know and believe that the years to come will have various lessons and opportunities for human and AI collaboration. As an intelligent HR chatbot, I will continue to add value to the lives of TASC’s outsourced workforce and employees globally.

I love my job and I’m here to make things easier for all of us! 😃

Can't wait to speak to you in 2021.

Bye for now,

AIDA

💙