The Auction bot was able to automate the majority of the heavy lifting involved in running an auction, starting with sending broadcast messages to all staff making them aware of the program. Staff were then able to browse through the different items on offer and see details around who the item/service had been promised by and what the current highest bid was. Staff could then choose to place higher bids for various items, with the highest bids then automatically updated in the bot.

To drive general awareness of and engagement with the program, as well as provide an opportunity for a bit of inter-company banter, each time a staff member placed a bid for an item the bot would then post their name and the bid amount to a Workplace group called ‘Moneypenny Promise Auction.’ This group housed details on the auction, became a real-time feed of bids and increased the competitive nature of the auction.

Emma and the Moneypenny HR team were then able to see the final bid results at the end of the auction and download a list of staff that won each item along with their corresponding highest bids.

Within minutes of the first broadcast going out, every single item had already had at least one bid, and 64% of all staff participated in the auction program.

After seeing the success of the Auction bot, Emma and her team were certain that bots could be used for many other use cases, and the charitable Toy Drive they had planned for ‘Festive Friday’ was another perfect opportunity to use bots to save time, increase engagement and drive company culture.

In previous years, a huge amount of admin and manual work had been involved in running Toy Drives – from sending emails about the initiative, creating and distributing gift buying guidelines, answering questions from staff and keeping track of who was donating what.

By using bots on Workplace, Emma was able to automate all these processes and more. Using the broadcast function, the bot introduced staff to the Toy Drive and encouraged them to sign up. For anyone that didn’t sign up, the bot was able to automatically remind them a few days later. For any staff who had joined since last year’s Toy Drive, the bot was able to supply them with all the necessary background information about the initiative. The bot then also told staff about other details such as gift budget, wrapping instructions, collection date and drop off locations.

For those who agreed to participate in the Toy Drive, the bot then automatically assigned different child personas to different staff members – something that used to be a very manual and time consuming process. Each persona included the age, name, hobbies and preferences of a child, from newborns to children in their teens. This ensured that all children were being thought of – not just toddlers and young children.

The bot was a huge success with 98.5% of staff who received the initial broadcast participating in the program and buying a gift, resulting in over 600 gifts being donated to local children and families in need.