Working with a digital assistant makes you more productive! Expect to see more digital assistants in the workplace in the next few years.
- The Digital Assistant in the Workplace
- 5 Benefits of Having Workplace Digital Assistants
- Examples of Digital Assistants in the Workplace
- Meet Sophie, Stefanini’s Digital Assistant
You likely interact with digital assistants on a daily basis. From scheduling appointments to augmenting the Help Desk, digital assistants can be found in both our personal and professional lives – specifically transforming the ways businesses around the world operate. In fact, in 2019, Gartner predicted that by 2024, most employees would utilize digital assistants to help them with their day-to-day tasks in their working environments.
As we draw on machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to expand what digital assistants can do, one thing is for sure – expect to see more, not less, digital assistants augmenting employee performance across industries.
What are the best benefits that digital assistants bring to the workplace and how do they contribute to digital transformation? Read on for the answer!
What do you need to know about artificial intelligence? Check out our comprehensive guide!
The Digital Assistant in the Workplace
Digital assistants are currently helping employees work more efficiently by increasing productivity. How do they do it? According to Training Industry, digital assistants are best at information, acquisition, and analysis – tasks that can be time-consuming and lead to errors for their human counterparts.
Before you start to get nervous, don’t worry. Digital assistants cannot replace the human brain when it comes to anything requiring judgment, context, and nuance. So, we can leave the boring, tedious tasks to digital assistants, who can read and consumer information much more quickly than us. Then, we can use our human judgment to gain the best insights from the data sources they reference and of course, apply creativity and innovation.
5 Benefits of Having Workplace Digital Assistants
What can digital assistants handle that let us use our own brains for other tasks around the workplace? When used optimally, digital assistants can boost the workplace experience in the following ways:
1. Automate repetitive tasks: According to a 2017 report from McKinsey, 60 percent of all occupations are made up of 30 percent repetitive, automatable activities. It’s clear here that a digital assistant, which is built to automate repetitive tasks, will truly shine. Digital assistants are great for Sales, Marketing, Human Resources, and Customer Service because they can automate many of the activities prevalent in these departments, such as scheduling meetings, taking notes, and even writing emails. With AI handling these mundane tasks, human workers have more time to focus on important tasks.
2. Improve business processes: Did you know? Many B2B companies already use AI in some capacity to boost their sales processes and engage leads to increase conversion rates. For instance, some digital assistants are able to identify the best leads by emailing them and asking simple questions. In the world of HR, digital assistants are being tapped to automate recruitment processes by screening job applicants, scheduling interviews, and creating shortlists of candidates. By automating these processes, digital assistants also reduce the time it takes to hire choice recruits, saving money for the company in the process.
3. Streamline customer service: Customers already expect faster responses from chatbots than traditional channels. Further, chatbots are available 24/7 at times when a business would otherwise be closed and can provide support when there are no human workers available. Therefore, adding a chatbot to your website is an easy and cost-effective way to handle customer service and sales leads. They can answer simple questions and delegate more intensive questions to staff in real time. Again, they also can handle time-consuming tasks, allowing your employees to tackle more complicated jobs. Finally, decreased response times lead to happier customers or leads, which can increase conversion.
4. They can be integrated with existing products & services: Existing AI personal assistants like Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant have API integration so you can integrate with their infrastructure. Therefore, you can take advantage of their natural language capabilities to start using voice commands with your products or services, for instance. At the same time, you can also equip your product with an existing digital assistant, similar to the ways that some car companies are installing Alexa into their vehicles. Another application? You can create a smart product that integrates with a voice-activated digital assistant and make it part of the Internet of Things. The possibilities are seemingly endless!
5. Advance employees’ learning & development: By blending a digital assistant with additional technologies, businesses can build their digital workplace by granting instant access to company-specific information, like policies, sales goals, certification status, and more. These capabilities, in turn, can optimize the onboarding process and contribute to higher employee satisfaction.
How is AI boosting approaches to cybersecurity? Get the scoop here!
Examples of Digital Assistants in the Workplace
These are all names you’re likely familiar with as they’re the most prevalent examples of smart assistants on the market. I
- Siri
- Alexa.
- Cortana
In these cases, these digital assistants are known as “weak AI” or an AI system trained for a particular task.
According to My Tech Decisions, these intelligent assistants are becoming our coworkers, joining us in conference rooms and workstations. In 2018, for example, Amazon launched Alexa for Business and Microsoft has also been pushing for Cortana to become a larger part of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams. With COVID-19 still very much a part of the global conversation centered around work, more digital assistants like these examples are being deployed to streamline virtual meetings and enable contactless interactions with conference room infrastructure.
Who is Sophie? Why, Stefanini’s very own digital assistant! Learn more about her here.
Meet Sophie, Stefanini’s Digital Assistant
As our world becomes increasingly connected, new business challenges have inspired innovative digital solutions. As the world’s premier omni-channel virtual assistant, Sophie is one of these solutions.
Sophie is based on cognitive computing and artificial intelligence, with a focus on self-adaptation and both interactive and contextual automation—enabling her to achieve self-learning and human-like interaction.
Her design allows her to assist across different business scenarios and interact with various personas. With an omni-channel approach, she integrates with different channels to provide a tailored customer experience.
Are you interested in learning the many ways Sophie can integrate with and support employees? Contact us today to chat with an expert!
