WIREDGOV

The challenge

Breckland Council, one of 7 district councils in Norfolk, receives on average 9,000 calls into its customer contact centre each month.  

The council’s customer experience manager wanted to explore ways to to reduce some of the inbound telephone and email traffic and increase the support the contact centre team could provide to callers with more complex enquiries, whilst also achieving efficiency savings.

The solution

The council trialled using chatbots, exploring how an application with voice recognition could automate the more straightforward queries and interact with callers through a messaging platform. 

A business case was written to prove how this concept would benefit the council. Following approval, the council used our Artificial Intelligence DPS to run a further competition and appoint a suitable supplier. The specification included mandatory elements that the bidders must have, and desirable elements that they could have now or would be able to develop. 

The council also stipulated that they were seeking not just a contractor but a partner with experience of working in local government who could provide an end to end partnership. 

The result

Breckland Council awarded Ubisend a 4 year contract. They expect the chatbot application will achieve efficiency savings of around 30% through:

• receiving less telephone and email traffic 
• more queries fulfilled with the chatbot 
• machine learning and automation to manage certain email types such as council tax, bins and recycling, and benefits

The contact centre team at Breckland Council will now have more time to focus on the complex queries, improving customer satisfaction as waiting times are significantly reduced and resolution times improved. Due to the success of the procurement the council anticipates that other of their teams may now look at similar solutions to improve their outcomes.

Let us bring power to your procurement

By using computers to improve processes, artificial intelligence can help you manage and use data better, making public services more accessible. We can offer you access to these cutting edge technologies, along with support from our industry experts, giving you the power to transform your digital services. Created in collaboration with the Office for Artificial Intelligence, our Artificial Intelligence DPS makes it easier to buy this new technology and take advantage of what it has to offer. To find out more:

• visit the framework webpage
• complete our short online form quoting ‘artificial intelligence’ and a member of our expert team will be in touch
• call us on 0345 410 2222
• email info@crowncommercial.gov.uk

Don’t forget, you can find a full list of all the commercial agreements we offer, alongside details of how we can help you build policy considerations into your procurement, in our interactive digital brochure.