Large companies, employing tens of thousands of people, usually face a common problem: they need to improve the communication channel with their staff. Acciona found itself in this situation.

This company of more than 17,000 direct labor workers had a centralized helpline in place. In other words, employees could call the Human Resources department to resolve their queries and request documentation. However, the handicap of a large number of employees was compounded by the fact that they work in different geographical areas and outside the offices.

The large number of queries received by Human Resources in this way and their limited opening hours meant that this service was not operational. For this reason, they decided to look for a technological solution that would solve their problems, maximize their capacity and allow them to provide an effective response to their workers.

Optimization of its internal customer service channel

The solution to be implemented had to enhance Acciona's sustainability values and, on the other hand, drive the technological transformation underpinning the company. From here, the following objectives were defined: 

1. Reduce the time that HR staff spends on calls in which the employee only requests documentation and increase the time dedicated to those that resolve queries or incidents.
2. Bring the HR department closer to the rest of the workforce, offering a direct contact channel through which they feel supported and backed by the company. 
3. Facilitate the staff of this department so that they can take care of the rest of the tasks that add value, including proactively dealing with those calls that require a more complex solution.

In short, the aim was to provide service staff with a new automated contact channel to support the work carried out by the Human Resources department.

A voice and text assistant

Acciona had identified different types of questions that employees frequently asked. Therefore, they only needed to develop a system that would allow them to automate those employee queries that, in addition to being recurrent, did not require direct HR management.

In the first phase, a Virtual Assistant was developed to attend via telephone and later, this conversational agent was integrated into the WhatsApp channel. Thus, through a call or query via WhatsApp, any member of the direct labor workforce working in the Services division at Acciona can obtain useful information such as contract details, payroll, etc.

This conversational system, built with Dialogflow, has optimized response times and reduced the burden on the HR department. The user experience has improved not only for those who use it as an information channel but also for the department itself, which used to manage all these queries and can now focus on more complex tasks. These improvements have led to an increase in the quality of this internal service and a higher level of satisfaction for all those involved. 

In addition, to facilitate the management of the HR people in the Services division, a visualization panel has been developed. This dashboard records the calls, the reason for the queries and whether or not they have been resolved. 

24/7 employee assistance

Acciona's virtual assistant focused on Human Resources for the Services division and direct labor staff has arrived to make communication between workers and the company as easy as possible. And it is succeeding in doing so:

• This agent was born as a voice assistant, but its bet did not stop there. Since September 2021, it has been available to all employees on WhatsApp.
• It has started with three main use cases related to payroll, contracts and the selection process. And of all the queries initiated, 85.04% have been completed.
• In one year, 12,222 conversations have been maintained through the voice assistant. And, since its recent integration with WhatsApp, some 515 conversations have been held via this messaging channel, increasing exponentially.
• 12.57% of the queries are made outside working hours and 5.05% of the conversations take place during the weekend. These queries have been resolved thanks to the 24/7 availability of the virtual assistant. 

"The implementation of our Virtual Assistant has allowed us to digitally transform our processes, gaining speed in communication with direct labor workers in the service area and efficiency in our HR department. The technology we have used is mature and efficient".
- Marta Rodríguez Nogués, IT Manager at Acciona.

The team is currently working on the iteration of the virtual assistant after the launch of these first two phases. The aim is to continue incorporating new functionalities and boost the options of this virtual assistant to the maximum.

"This first experience has been a success and has encouraged our teams to propose new options in the processes we currently interact with employees. HR's goal is to support employees in high-value tasks and to automate those ones that are time and resource consuming, but where the employee does not particularly value personal attention, such as delivering documentation or consulting and sending data" - Nieves de la Torre, HR Operations and Transformation Manager.