Digitalizing Empathy and Care: Looking Back on Four Years of DUDE Bot

On March 27, 2020, the health check-in chatbot named DUDE (Digital Usher for Disasters and Emergencies) was born. Four years later, DUDE continues to champion care by broadcasting wellness content and capturing employee sentiments.

Hatred for Google Forms Goes a Long Way

When we started creating DUDE Bot, we weren’t really thinking about creating a bot that employees will love. We just wanted to solve a simple problem: how do we stop using Google Forms and Google Sheets to monitor the daily health status of 8,000+ employees.

DUDE Bot during his first week as a Ka-Globe

It was dreadful for both the users and the back-end support. Employees had to answer questions including declaring all the countries they’ve visited in the last 2 weeks, and answer yes/no questions to each COVID-19 symptom. The HR Employee Services team had it worse! They had to look at thousands of entries daily to find which employees needed support. It was a critical and time-bound work, yet very prone to error.

I hate to admit it, but it was our common hatred at the time for Google Forms and Google Worksheets that made us design, test, and launch DUDE Bot in 6 days.

As soon as DUDE was launched, we were able to reduce 27 questions into 1 simple question: How are you feeling today? Employees who are well need to click the yes button only. Employees who are unwell need to fill-in symptoms after clicking no. Within an hour, an HR member is checking on unwell employees if they need assistance and a teleconsulting service.

From SMS Services to Chatbot Conversations

Little did I know that my background in writing SMS services for ABS-CBN Interactive 14 years ago would come in handy in creating the conversation design and flow of a chatbot. I needed to keep things simple so we can launch in the shortest time possible, and the training of fitting engaging and critical messages into 160 characters proved useful.

The pilot features I proposed included (1) daily health check-ins, (2) links to critical information such as the Globe COVID-19 page and reliable websites such as DOH and WHO, (3) support for frontline teams including replenishment of PPEs, and arrangements for accommodations and transportation, and (4) contact details for teleconsult services and mental health hotlines.

Ideas such as pushing health tips, broadcasting wellness content and capturing employee sentiments through surveys were on the table, but we needed to roll it out quickly and they were shelved for the next phase.

Creating the Lovable Brand

Vicky, my partner in Employee Experience who used to be a researcher, has a knack for appreciating and creating brands. She quickly assembled pegs including Baymax, the inflatable healthcare companion robot, Russel, the nine-year-old Wilderness Explorer from

Up, and Kinder Surprise Egg, the capsule with a surprise toy inside.

This became the basis not only for DUDE’s avatar, but also the tone of all his messages and the experience we wanted to deliver daily. DUDE should not only be approachable and reliable, all of his daily health check-ins should be a welcome surprise.

Soon we found ourselves nervous, sweating, presenting our design to Nico, Ato, and Rizza and weirdly, it was one of the easiest and fastest approvals I’ve experienced in my life. Creativity is truly unbridled when you have leaders who let good ideas thrive.

As soon as the platform that will enable the automation of a daily health check-in was approved, it was time to onboard other members.

Assembling the DUDE Squad

Emil, our HR Communications Expert, and one of the best storytellers that I know, quickly created the roadmap on how we will onboard employees into using DUDE. Created soon after are some of the best animated videos, interactive pubmats and sharable GIFs.

Mika, our Programs Lead, who in her past role as a Marketing Manager worked on webhooks and consolidating data from different platforms, enabled us to integrate our very basic bot platform into Google Sheets and then later on into Google Data Studio. This made the work of our back end team easier and the monitoring of COVID-19 cases much faster.

Finally, our two Lyns from HR Employee Services, helped finalize the Service Design for the DUDE users. We initially targeted a response time of 4 hours for anyone who reports unwell. Then over a few days we kept reducing the SLA response time to 2 hours, then to an hour, then eventually to 30 minutes.

Employee Listening through DUDE

One of the many interesting things we quickly found out in DUDE is that employees are very eager to interact with the chatbot. They would send thank you messages to the back-end users and even create tickets just so they could interact with the bot admins. We quickly figured out that we can leverage the high engagement of DUDE and stated sending surveys through the chatbot.

We sent a handful of surveys via DUDE Bot within four months of the COVID lockdown

Within months, not only have we launched an effective listening tool, we have gathered enough sentiments for us to utilize DUDE to enable our employes to co-create our entire COVID-19 Response Program.

An Infographic of the love that DUDE Bot has been receiving during his first year

Because of the love that DUDE has been receiving, we have been featured in a lot of publications. We also ended up winning a Stevie Award, a World CEO Award, a Globee Award, an HR Excellence Award, an Innovation Award from Meta Workplace and a Purposeful Innovation Award from Globe Excellence Awards.

Are you sure DUDE is a Bot?

Eventually, as COVID infection declined, the health check-ins in DUDE Bot began to decline as well. But we needed to make sure that the engagement with employees retain high so we kept experimenting with creating different health check-ins everyday.

Conversation Design for Health Check-ins

The employee response was very validating. The DUDE team has saved these messages and we keep them in a digital cookie jar to open and look at whenever the work gets challenging again. There are several that I keep re-reading whenever I need the extra motivation, but here are my favorites:

Are you sure Dude is a Bot? He never misses to uplift me every single day even before I start my work😊

Surely a #GDayEveryday with my buddy DUDE Bot because he brightens up my day with his greetings, wisdom and great sense of humor. 🌞👯‍♀️🙌

You are a blessing to everyone especially to me in this time of pandemic.🤗 Thank you so much for coming into our lives. We appreciate your love and care towards every Ka-Globe! 💙🥰 Mabuhay ka! 🥳

DUDE Bot in the Physical World

At the height of COVID-19 Pandemic, DUDE Bot receives 6000+ health check-ins daily, and has assisted over 9,813 unwell check-ins by the end of 2021. It’s no surprise that when we returned to office in April 2022, DUDE Bot welcomed all Ka-Globe back to their home: The Globe Tower.

Since we are back to normal, DUDE Bot quickly transitioned into a Digital Engagement & Wellness Buddy. DUDE revived our Wellness Wednesday campaigns and we saw some of the most commented wellness content including Live Healthier, Summer Plans and Ka-Globe Cuties.

DUDE also invited employees to wellness activities such as the re-opening of G-Clubs and 6F Wellness Center, as well as getting more employees to attend face to face events.

DUDE Bot After COVID-19 Pandemic

As the de facto Wellness and Engagement Buddy of every Ka-Globe, DUDE has been checking on our new hires on select moments that matter, sending them surveys and nudging other Ka-Globe who might best help our new employees to adjust to their new environment.

DUDE was also instrumental in culture building. We launched our Globe Way Values refresh with the help of DUDE, broadcasting content and encouraging employee participation. Our highlight was the 21 Day Keep Things Simple Challenge, where people leaders and individual contributors alike shared their ideas on how we can improve our collective ways of working.

Senior Leaders encouraging Ka-Globe to Keep Things Simple was broadcasted through DUDE

It’s new features Anonymous Feedback and Suggestion Box also proved to be a hit amassing hundreds of messages from employees on its first month of launch. From simple suggestions like themes and food choices for the next employee event to more complex concerns like misalignments in new job roles between manager and direct reports, DUDE is always ready to be a reliable buddy and sounding board for our Ka-Globe.

Soon we will launch our longevity surveys, and DUDE will check on tenured employees when they need checking in the most. We are also looking at a more wholistic way of approaching wellness, and DUDE will play a key role in improving every Ka-Globe’s well-being.