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AI-driven citizen contact system – Hillingdon Council

Hillingdon Council took a bold step and became the first UK local authority to use voice automation and AI at scale, working in partnership with PwC and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Hillingdon’s goal was to use technology to become a human-centred and digitally enabled council. The collaboration with PwC and AWS delivered an AI-driven citizen contact system which brought improvements for citizens and delivered significant efficiencies.

Challenges

Hillingdon Council provides services to around 310,000 residents and despite efforts to enhance the functionality of its online channel, call volumes remained high, even for low-level enquiries. This was unsustainable.

PwC’s initial work identified a range of efficiency improvements, such as enhancing the information provided online, removing unnecessary email communication channels and providing a new web chat option.

The popularity of voice calls and the local demographics allowed PwC to show that this was an important channel to retain and transform.

Approach

Hillingdon was determined to adopt a different approach; they believed that smart use of digital could both release efficiencies and improve delivery of services to citizens.

The council’s data showed that at least 35% of all Hillingdon’s customer contact was highly transactional and therefore suitable for automation using AI.

The business case also identified that service take-up could reach 80% for some caller types (including items such as paying rent, finding out the day for rubbish collection or reporting missed collections). It also factored social care service support, such as requesting an adult social care assessment or reporting a change of circumstances. But the council needed to ensure vulnerable residents across the borough and those who may struggle to use the automated line, would not be excluded.

To enable a greater level of personalisation and connection between the council and its citizens, PwC recommended removing contact centre email channels; supporting automated calls with web chat capabilities; and improving web content to reduce overall voice call demand.

All these channels were then integrated into existing systems, so caller data was available to personalise the experience and fulfil the underlying customer need at that first point of contact.

Outcomes and benefits

The impact was immediate. With PwC and Amazon’s support, in only a three-month period:

  • Hillingdon became the first UK local authority to have deployed an automated voice and web chat solution at scale.
  • The cost per call using the automated solution is just 5% of the call cost when handled by human operatives.
  • The solution immediately provided capacity of 25-30 full-time employees.
  • The council is now able to handle well over 40% of all calls with its conversational AI system.

For citizens, this new approach now has fundamentally changed how they interact with their council:

  • It has reduced call waiting times
  • The enhanced web chat feature can handle unlimited numbers of interactions and is supporting the council to manage and respond to the 20,000 plus enquiries it receives relating to rent payment queries from its tenants annually. Importantly they can now phone the council 24 hours a day.

Lessons learnt

Hillingdon now has more confidence in its digital transformation with a better supported culture of innovation and a structured approach to continuous improvement.

“The performance improvement we have gained from an approach based on AI means that the council is more accessible to residents, council staff can focus on more challenging and rewarding work and we have new skills that make us self-sufficient.”

Tony Zaman, Chief Executive, Hillingdon LBC

View original case study article at themj.co.uk