Fixing the Onboarding Process with Chatbots

The Problem

The average cost of on boarding per employee is $4,125. For a multinational company this can cost millions or even billions of dollar every year. In addition, only 12 percent of new employees think that their employer does a good job on onboarding. Most new employees also this that their onboarding program is too short.

The fact that many companies don’t even change their program based on employee concern is an even bigger problem. One reason for this is that they don’t know how to change the program. The same onboarding arrangements have been around for decades without change.

The Solution

Emerging technologies such as AI have made improving this system possible. I created a model called OnBoard. This is a chatbot that allows employees to use AI to answer any questions they need. This allows employees to move at their own pace and only learn what is applicable to themselves. If an employee has trouble with the system they are redirected to the appropriate department. This saves time and allows for more efficient work. OnBoard only works for sales representatives at this point. However, we are expanding to many different job roles.

How It Works

OnBoard uses the Chatterbot API to use logic adapters. We use the best match logic adapter. Essentially, we put in hundreds example sentences. When an employee asks questions that have a similar meaning and tone to one of the example sentences, the bot will display it. This does not work unless the model has many example sentences. The model also uses the the Chatterbot CorpusTrainer. This allows the model to understand simple English words and phrases which in turn can help make it more accurate.CorpusTrainer contains a variety of phrases from many fields as well such as finance and psychology.

The future of onboarding is here with OnBoard

Check out our website at https://sites.google.com/view/onboardnow/home