How Home Group's AI mission and chatbot tool makes work easier

Established in 1935, Home Group is a major UK provider of housing, health and care services with over 60,000 properties in England and Scotland. Employing 3,500 colleagues, it serves 125,000 customers and supports around 11,000 people with health issues.

Led by Nicola Crowley, head of internal communications, the IC team at Home Group also includes Mark Cottier, internal communication change lead, and Loyal Dube, internal communications channel and content advisor.

Mark says: “Our mission is to build homes, independence and aspirations – and supporting our colleagues and customers through chatbots helps us do just that.”

In 2020, Home Group started to introduce a suite of colleague-focused chatbots for their Workplace from Meta installation, using software from The Bot Platform. The chatbot suite supports colleagues with everything from finding out more about the organisation and engaging with wellbeing resources to onboarding new starters. It has even been expanded to supporting customers.

“Doing this in a personalised way was a priority,” explains Mark. “We knew colleagues could potentially see chatbots as feeling less personal, so we made sure we designed them to support the ways they already work.”

One example of this is the Help for Customers chatbot, which the IC team developed in partnership with Home Group’s communities and placemaking manager, Abbie Peel. Instead of the customer interacting with the chatbot directly, the Home Group colleague uses the chatbot on the customer’s behalf to help them maximise the amount of support they can get with things like the cost of living. This meant creating the chatbot to meet the needs of colleagues – for example, making it work from different devices, such as a phone or a laptop, and designing it with human language in mind, to prevent it from sounding too artificial.

“The great thing about our chatbots,” continues Mark, “is that they are very intuitive to use. They don’t require complex digital skills – if you can send a text, you can use our chatbots.”

Thorough planning, which involved setting specific goals and outcomes, meant the internal communication team didn’t face any unexpected challenges when introducing their suite of chatbots.

“We wanted to focus on what our colleagues were using already, like our Workplace installation, and embed a system within that that would make things easier for them,” says Mark.

The introduction of any chatbot has to align with Home Group’s strategy, integrate with the organisation’s business processes, deliver business value and feel familiar to colleagues too. The IC team is just one of the teams involved in Home Group’s wider AI journey, and has already shared its chatbot journey and learned from other organisations in their sector at HACT's Data and Digital Conference 2023 (watch or download some of the HACT presentations/sessions here) and at a separate session with HACT on How AI can help you signpost more effectively.

“Overall, my advice for IC professionals would be to think about how chatbots – or whatever piece of technology you might be implementing – will work as part of your organisation,” concludes Mark. “Be clear about what tasks and outcomes the tool is responsible for, and onboard it with intention. This can be an intimidating topic for some people, given how many changes AI has already brought into our lives, so the focus always must be on how we can use these tools to help people.”

Pictured: Nicola Crowley, head of internal communications; Mark Cottier, internal communication change lead; Abbie Peel, communities and placemaking manager; Loyal Dube, internal communications channel and content advisor