CASE STUDY
Akamai Technologies
New Employee Onboarding: Accelerating training and certification with chatbots
Highlights
- Avi is an award-winning chatbot designed by Akamai and Mobile Coach to help new hires navigate the onboarding process and complete their certification.
- New hires who used Avi were:
- 58% more likely to complete their Technical Primer Certification
- Took 20% less time to complete their certification
- 80% of Avi users reported feeling confident with HTTP concepts taught in their training
Contents
[Video] Avi: Award-Winning Onboarding Chatbot
Watch this 45 second video to learn more about Avi; a collaboration between Mobile Coach and Akamai.
Key Challenges
When Akamai’s new hires expressed concerns regarding lack of support and guidance during onboarding, Akamai established three areas for improvement:
- Improved communication between the manager, mentor and new hire
- Reminders for new hire of onboarding milestones and subjects to ensure certification is finished on time and with confidence
- New hires needed an easy way to reach get answer
“...having Avi provide prompts and reminders as I go through my onboarding training has been a positive experience....”
The Solution
Akamai knew that the solution needed a few key features:
- Reliably communicate with new hires
- Scale and support new employees globally
- Low barrier to entry
- Unburden managers and mentors from constant communication requirements
- Connect managers, mentors and new hires when live help is needed
With this in mind, Akamai partnered with Mobile Coach to create a chatbot named Avi. This chatbot followed-up with new employees on their path to learn, prepare for, and pass their certification.
Avi’s main goals were to:
- Increase certification pass rate
- Decrease time from date of hire to certification
Design
Akamai’s chatbot is named Avi. He communicates with new hires via SMS or the LINE app. During a new hire’s first 31 days, Avi sends messages to remind, motivate, gather information, and check in on required key tasks. When a user asks a question, Avi passes it to the onboarding team who then respond through Avi.
"I was struggling with a particular concept and when I said that, Avi suggested some Lynda.com videos that were extremely helpful. That alone was enough to make him worthwhile during my onboarding..."
Results
After 1 year of Avi, Akamai found that new employees who use Avi:
- Are 58% more likely to complete their Technical Primer Certification
- Finish their Technical Primer Certification in 20% less time
- 80% of Avi users reported feeling confident with HTTP concepts taught in their training, and 100% reported feeling confident with the concepts learned during Technical Primer Certification
- 76% of Avi users were “high responders,” meaning they answered more than half of the time Avi asked them a question during their first 30 days
- 62% of new hires expressed that Avi was helpful or very helpful
Looking Ahead
- Akamai and Mobile Coach are creating new, updated versions of Avi to fit employee onboarding needs of additional departments
- Akamai and Mobile Coach are working to find ways to increase adoption rate of Avi
- Long-term, Akamai is working with Mobile Coach to create API connections for automated information sharing that will make Avi even smarter
About Akamai and Avi
Akamai is a technology company committed to making digital experiences fast, intelligent and secure. Top global brands rely on Akamai as their competitive edge. Akamai helps them win in the market through agile solutions that extend the power of their multi-cloud world.
The Avi chatbot supports new employees during onboarding and helps them through technical certification. Avi helped Akamai realize an increased pass rate and reduction in time to certification.
Akamai and Mobile Coach received a 2019 Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Bronze Award for Avi for Best Use of Mobile Learning.
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