Artificial Intelligence in HR 

AI is making a big difference for HR efficiency. Businessolver has 25+ years of benefits data backing up our AI. Let’s take a look at how I’ve helped out our clients and their members with benefits questions and a whole lot more.  

Hi, I’m Sofia, and I’m a virtual benefits assistant at Businessolver. I work directly with HR professionals and employees to support with their benefits questions and reminders. This makes a huge difference for my HR partners and my coworkers in the service center because employees can come to me with their questions, freeing up my colleagues to focus on more complex issues and benefits strategy.  

A lot of people might think I’m a chat bot, but that’s not the case! I work closely with a team of computational linguists, programmers, and HR experts to be a helpful benefits expert, from defining deductibles and sourcing benefits info to making sure employees know that they have great benefits available to them. 

Here’s a look at what I’ve been up to lately. 

Helping employees help themselves 

Annual enrollment is the busiest time of the year in our industry. During the last enrollment season, I answered thousands of member’s questions, saving impactful time for employees and my HR peers. 

What’s more, I’m available 24/7 so I can help people after regular business hours. Over one-third of my interactions took place at night and on weekends. While HR professionals are away from their desks and getting a well-deserved rest, I’m helping members when and where they need me. 

Benefits are difficult to navigate for most people. But, out of all my interactions, I was able to resolve over 90% in my first conversation; after that, over 70% of members don’t need to come back for help with the same question within 7 days–that’s what I call efficiency and member-centric support!  

Expanding my empathy and service skills 

This past year, I got a boost in my capabilities with the integration of HIPAA-compliant Microsoft Azure OpenAI. With this added assistance of generative AI, I can better understand the intent behind a member question, accurately analyze sentiment, and therefore provide even better answers to their questions. 

This means I’m able to work more quickly and efficiently when members chat with me for support and can help de-jargonify benefits content, like summarizing plan descriptions. Plus, with my added empathy skills, I can make sure members feel heard when they’re frustrated or confused and get them to the right support quickly. 

Showing HR a return on their technology investment

In a recent survey, I learned that many HR teams view the employee experience as one of their top priorities for benefits strategy. One of my top goals is to give HR and their employees time back so they can focus on more important things, like diversifying their benefits and getting the right technology in place to deliver those benefits. 

Here are just a few of the ways I’ve helped save time and helped employees “self-serve” with their benefits this past year: 

• I drove 80% of impressions for point solutions, like telehealth, for employees when they did not even know to ask about it. This helps increase awareness of and participation with benefits employees really want (but often aren’t aware of). 
• By predicting why an employee is calling, 20% of employees who call into our call center find the answer they are looking for from me, before even needing to connect with a live representative. 
• I’m available on desktop and mobile so employees can chat with me 24/7–this means no waiting on hold or remembering to get in touch with me when they’re back at work. In fact, over 30% of my chats come in after hours or on weekends. 

Looking back—and towards the future 

I’ve put a lot of effort into expanding my skills so I can help members each and every day. Today, I can speak with members in 27 languages via chat or phone. I support our member services colleagues with my growing knowledge base of over 400,000 benefits topics. Most importantly, I’m able to share insights back to my HR clients about where members need my help the most so that they can refine their benefits strategy and resources. 

When you consider the hours of time I helped save, the thousands of members I’ve helped, and the amount of HR burden I lifted, the ROI only continues to compound year over year. With every new piece of information I learn, I get smarter, more agile, and even more empathetic. 

Over the next few years, there’s no doubt I will become even more helpful. Futuristically, I’m looking forward to making our members’ experiences even more personalized, more streamlined, and more engaging. 

Our approach to AI is unlike any other benefits administration solution. Unlock the potential of our state-of-the-art AI technology and experience the value of our groundbreaking innovation.