What is a chatbot for internal use?

Chatbots can be used in two major ways. One is for customers, where it leads to the resolution of inquiries from your own customers or potential customers in the form of conversation, and the other is for internal use, which we will introduce here.

Chatbots for internal use are designed to respond to internal inquiries about internal operations or the company's products. For example, when an employee in the sales department wants to know more details about a product manufactured by the company, or when the customer center wants to know the approximate number of days it will take to repair a product failure, the chatbot will respond on behalf of the person in charge of each case.

Advantages of using chatbots to handle internal inquiries

The main advantages of using chatbots for handling internal inquiries are as follows

▶Shorten the time it takes to get an answer

With email inquiries, it takes time to get an answer if the person in charge is not available to check the email. However, with chatbots, you can get an immediate response 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, reducing the time it takes to resolve your questions.

▶Reduce the risk of questions being left unanswered

Even if you have a question and want to resolve it, if the person in charge is absent or busy, there is a possibility that you will not be able to make an inquiry. Also, if the question is too basic, or if you want to ask something again that you have asked before, you may be hesitant to ask it. For these reasons, there is a risk that questions will remain unanswered if you contact the person in charge directly. However, if the question remains unresolved, it may lead to a major mistake later on. With a chatbot, it does not matter if a person in charge is available or not, and you can ask even basic questions without hesitation. Since questions can be resolved without leaving them unanswered, the risk of mistakes occurring is also reduced.

▶Promotes employees to solve questions by themselves

Chatbots are also useful in cases such as "I have a question, but I don't know who to ask," or "I can't find the answer because there are too many FAQs. By using chatbots to consolidate and centralize frequently asked questions within the company, time spent searching for the right person or place to ask the question can be reduced, and employees themselves can quickly resolve questions. In addition, chatbots that can be displayed in a pop-up format have a strong presence, avoiding the "I don't know where the FAQ is" situation.

Accumulation of internal knowledge

As more employees use chatbots, information on what questions employees have will be accumulated, leading to the resolution of company-wide problems. In addition, by putting the knowledge of each person in charge, which until now has been assigned to a specific person, into the chatbot, it will also have the effect of accumulating in-house knowledge.

▶Reduction of the burden on the person in charge

It is a heavy burden for the person in charge to receive the same question over and over again and give the same answer, and the person in charge cannot do his or her primary job while responding to the question. By using chatbots, the burden on the person in charge can be reduced and more time can be allocated to their primary tasks, leading to higher productivity.

▶ Uniformity in the quality of responses to inquiries.

The quality of responses will be more uniform, as different staff members will no longer be able to give different answers to different questions. This will also reduce cases of confusion among employees due to different answers.

▶Ability to resolve ambiguous questions

In addition to e-mail, FAQs can be used to respond to internal inquiries. However, FAQs take longer than chatbots to resolve ambiguous questions. For example, if you are looking for a certain document but do not know the official name of the document, you cannot find the keyword in the FAQ. You may be able to find it by browsing through the related FAQs, but you may be able to find the document you are looking for more quickly by using the conversational style of a chatbot.

Points to keep in mind when introducing in-house chatbots

Although chatbots for internal use have various merits, their introduction does not always produce results. Here, we explain what points to keep in mind when implementing chatbots.

For more information on unsuccessful cases of chatbot implementation for internal use, please refer to "What are the causes of chatbot operation failure? The Road to Success: Learning from Common Case Studies" for more information on failed attempts to implement chatbots for internal use.

▶Select one that can be easily managed by anyone.

Business rules and information within a company change from time to time. At such times, chatbots that are "cumbersome and time-consuming" in adding or managing questions and answers, or that cannot be changed without asking an outside party to do so, cannot respond quickly. If chatbots do not add and manage scenarios on a regular basis, there is a risk that the information will remain outdated and no one will use it as it is.

It is important to select a chatbot that anyone can easily add and manage questions and answers, even if there are no employees with programming knowledge in the company. Non-programming chatbots, which can be operated without the need for programming knowledge, are especially recommended because they do not limit the number of personnel who can manage and operate them.

▶Gather enough feedback from the field before implementation

If chatbots do not register questions and answers, they will not provide the desired answers no matter what they ask. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare frequently asked questions and answers after collecting feedback from the field thoroughly at the time of introduction.

We recommend narrowing down the scope of questions that can be answered at first and then expanding the scope (increasing the number of questions and answers). It is easy to want to prepare as many answers as possible from the beginning, but increasing the number of answers without narrowing down the scope may end up with a chatbot that cannot answer. Narrowing down the scope of the inquiries that are likely to have high needs within the company and registering a large number of questions and answers for those areas will be highly appreciated.

▶Considering the introduction of AI-type chatbots

There are two types of chatbots: a scenario type that responds only to registered questions and answers, and an AI type that uses machine learning to predict employee questions in conversation and derive answers. The scenario type is effective for simple questions, but the answer may not be displayed unless the question is asked according to the keywords registered in the FAQ.

With the AI type, even a word-only search will automatically generate candidate answers, making it easier to reach an answer at an early stage. Also, even if the word is ambiguous and multiple answers are expected, it will pick up candidate topics and ask back which topic the question is about. Therefore, AI-type systems are likely to produce higher results.

▶Select one that can be integrated into the communication tools your company uses.

More and more companies are adopting teleworking as a way to combat infectious diseases. Communication tools are essential when teleworking, and we recommend a type of chatbot that can be integrated into these tools.

Since teleworkers often work with their communication tools always on, it is more convenient to use chatbots within the communication tools rather than setting up a new chatbot. As a result, the usage rate will increase, and you will be able to achieve better results.

HUE Chatbot can be integrated with Microsoft Teams and can run chat on LINE, so no system development is required. The same FAQs can also be used in other dialogue interfaces besides LINE, and even if it is embedded in multiple communication tools, there is no need to maintain each of them separately. It can contribute to resolving employees' questions while improving operational efficiency.

For more information on how to measure the effectiveness of chatbots, please refer to " How to Measure and Verify the Effectiveness of Chatbots to Know the Results Correctly ".

Selecting a chatbot for internal use that meets your needs

Inherently, chatbots for internal use have various advantages. However, there is no point in introducing them if no one uses them. Reasons for not using chatbots include "Questions are not resolved" and "Chatbots are not available when you want to use them.

Chatbots for internal use that improve results, as mentioned in the article, have features such as "anyone can easily maintain it" and "it automatically generates answer candidates even when searching for words, so you can get an answer quickly. It is also important to select an AI type that can easily solve ambiguous questions and a type that can be integrated into communication tools.

HUE chatbots address these points with non-programming and an easy-to-use management screen. In addition, it is equipped with Japan's largest language dictionary of 2.9 million words (as of May 2021) and can respond to ambiguous words, making a significant contribution to resolving internal problems. By reducing the number of internal inquiries, the burden on employees is reduced, and the time previously spent on responding to inquiries can be used for other, more productive tasks. Please take a look at the following materials for an introduction.