THE CHALLENGE
Ziff Davis is a leading global digital-media company operating in three core verticals: Technology, Gaming, and Shopping. Ziff Davis has been growing dramatically over the past several years, having acquired a number of new business entities. Headquartered in New York, NY (with offices across the globe), the Ziff Davis HR team sought out to provide their team members (from existing to newly acquired employees) with immediate support, anytime, from anywhere. It was also essential that each business maintain its unique culture while benefiting by being part of a larger organization.
Ziff Davis desired a solution that was scalable, easy to maintain, yet could be customized to address the differences in each business unit and be accessible in the various Slack workspaces. Their goal was to empower employees with an innovative self-service solution, to provide consistent communications and access to information (when they need it), to improve onboarding and people operations efficiencies.
OUR SOLUTION
The Ziff Davis team selected MeBeBot’s AI-driven Intelligent Assistant to provide employees access to immediate answers to their HR, Operations and IT questions, without sending emails to individuals within each business unit or creating additional emails in the department specific group inboxes. Instead, MeBeBot’s Intelligent Assistant was installed in various Slack workspaces (for specific business entities), managed from one centralized curated knowledge base (containing hundreds of HR, IT, and Operations questions with default answers).
“Ziff Davis has a family of unique businesses and we need to be able to support employees’ needs, foster engagement, and provide consistent company communications to all,” stated Shannon Hogan, VP of Human Resources. “MeBeBot’s Intelligent Assistant reduces the impact of manually answering our employees’ unique questions, so that we can extend our culture while growing and scaling our organization.”
Within weeks, the Ziff Davis HR and IT teams were able to personalize MeBeBot’s Intelligent Assistant’s knowledge base with answers for each business unit, for benefits, perks, policies and procedures for their employees. The entire solution was launched to all US and Canadian employees in under one month. MeBeBot not only automates answers for employees’ FAQs, but MeBeBot is a new communications “channel” to send out important company updates, alerts, and reminders, driving adoption and usage.
With Ziff Davis’ business strategy of acquiring companies that fit their digital media portfolio (including RetailMeNot, Ookla, Humble Bundle, Ekahau, IGN, and Spiceworks), each business unit reaped the rewards of the Ziff Davis company culture, policies, and core payroll/benefits. Yet, it’s important that they are able to maintain specific perks and other policies previously in place (before their acquisitions).
The MeBeBot team was able to easily add new custom questions and answers to the knowledge base to direct and address many inquiries related to each specific business unit. By utilizing the various Slack workspaces, Ziff Davis employees receive real-time updates and consistent communications to extend the company culture and unity amongst the various business units.
“With MeBeBot, all Ziff Davis employees are better supported, with one place to go for accurate and up-to-date information, as we grow and evolve,” said Georgina Mena, Benefits Partner at RetailMeNot. “MeBeBot frees up time for HR, providing them with 24/7 self-service access to answers, so that the various HR team members don’t have to manage group email accounts and we can focus our energies on return to work strategies, career development, and other perks that make Ziff Davis a great place to work.”
Today, MeBeBot supports employees in the US and Canada, however with ongoing acquisitions and a global workforce, Ziff Davis has plans to expand MeBeBot to support all global employees.
THE RESULT
Instant Answers to Employees’ FAQs, Specific to Business Units, in various collaboration channels
The Ziff Davis HR and IT teams have a centralized Global Knowledge Base, within the Customer Admin Portal, with a dashboard to show usage results of employees’ inquires, across the entire business. With the ability to connect to various Slack workspaces, employees from various business units receive accurate answers, specific to their needs. As an innovation partner, Ziff Davis provides ongoing feedback as to how MeBeBot can be extended to support various types of acquisitions so that new employee onboarding can be met with scalability, ease of updating answers, and create efficiencies through M&A growth.
Download the Ziff Davis Case Study