With the emergence of work-from-home and distributed models this year, organisations in India are witnessing an increased interest in artificial intelligence (AI) powered conversational chatbots, reports Express Computer, citing data from HR tech company PeopleStrong. With a 100% uptick witnessed in health and performance-related queries, employees are trusting AI chatbots to guide them through these unprecedented times. As employees continued to work remotely, industries with distributed workforce came out as the most avid users of conversational AI chatbots with BFSI, retail, pharma, and IT industries witnessing an increase in the range of 30%-40% for HR centric queries after the nationwide lockdown. This year, chatbots have been used to automate employee helpdesks as well. With leave, attendance, payroll, and employment details setting the bar with higher volumes, there has been a tactical shift in employees’ interest towards newer AI-chatbot offerings like health and wellbeing, conversation enabled meetings, performance, and remote knowledge repository access.