HR Solutions’ new chat function helps Sandians get answers

What if you had a question for a company and there were several ways to get an answer quickly and efficiently? What if you didn’t have to spend valuable time listening to background music while on hold? What if you got the personal, and more importantly, timely response you needed? What if all of that wasn’t a hypothetical “what if” but a reality right now?

HR Solutions is changing the way it connects with people who have questions, offering more ways to get support from their team members, so that more of your questions are answered when you need it. Less waiting, more personal attention and more answers, and it’s available now from HR Solutions. A new chat feature debuted in August 2022 allows Sandians to submit questions to HR Solutions and quickly get answers.

For Human Resources Director Rob Nelson, adding the chat feature to the HR Solutions site was a highlight of the year.

“We were super excited to introduce this technology to support Sandians when they need assistance,” he said. “We are introducing technology to help (people) regardless of whether you prefer to use call back assist to schedule a return call at a time that works best for you, or whether you need (to chat with) an HR professional to walk you through completing an e-form or finding a resource.”

This was an important effort for HR Solutions. “Chat is one of many high-impact milestones in our roadmap to continuously improve the HR Solutions service at Sandia,” said IT solutions architect Rich Griego, one of the team members who made the feature possible.

A chat feature has been one of the most requested service enhancements since HR Solutions launched in 2020. Now that it’s available, it allows any Sandian with access to the Sandia Restricted Network to chat with an HR Solutions team member about questions on anything HR-related, from benefits to a name change or even telecommuting.

One of the key goals of adding the chat feature was to help improve HR Solutions’ abandon rate; that is, lower the number of people who get frustrated and hang up after staying on the line and hearing “your call is very important to us” one too many times.

In November 2021, that abandon rate was 18%, meaning people were giving up and not waiting on the phone to get answers about 18% of the time. Since that time, HR Solutions continued to add new ways for people to contact team members for the answers they need, and now with the inclusion of the chat feature, that abandon rate has gone from 18% to 4%. So, more people are getting their questions answered more often and generally, in a shorter amount of time.

Those numbers not only reflect HR Solutions’ desire to continue to improve the experience for their customers but is a great example of a collaborative effort to improve the quality of service at Sandia. “The success of chat is a result of the strong partnership between HR, IT and the employee community we serve,” Rich said.

To give the chat feature a try, active Sandians can go to hr.sandia.gov, open the HR Solutions dropdown on the top right of the page and select “Request Chat.” The feature isn’t currently available to retired Sandians, as a verifiable login to the Sandia Restricted Network is needed for the feature.

However, chat isn’t the only way to contact HR Solutions for questions.

Anyone can visit hr.sandia.gov to find answers to questions on topics such as telecommuting, life events or open enrollment. HR Solutions can also be reached at 505-284-4700, and if someone can’t answer right away, there’s an available call-back assist option to schedule a return call at a more convenient time or leave a voicemail for a return call from an HR Solutions team member. Questions can also be submitted at the “Ask a question” link on the HR website.

There are lots of different ways, depending on your specific need, to contact HR Solutions and get answers to those tricky questions for your life and work. With new features like chat, HR Solutions continues to make that interminable wait while being told “your call is very important to us” a thing of the past.