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Automation:  Three creative uses by local government

 

Many councils are looking for new ways to work and meet their community's evolving needs.  For a growing number, the solution is automation

As a non-disruptive technology, automation helps local governments to win back time in the working day and focus on serving their community.

Want to brush up on automation technologies?

 

Three creative uses of automation in local government


It can be challenging to consider how you can apply automation without context.  To help, we've compiled a list of three local government offices that have solved challenges with creative uses of automation.

Conversational AI:  Speak your constituents' language (literally)


Monmouthshire Council typically takes around 50,000 phone calls a year from its community.  Many of these are low-level queries - things like garden waste and bin collection days. A smaller number are more urgent and require human support to solve a complex problem or help a vulnerable person. 


To make more time for urgent calls, Monmouthshire County Council created Monty - a bilingual website chatbot that can 'speak' with the community in Welsh and English.

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Using conversational AI developed by We Build Bots, 'Monty' is used to instantly answer common queries and provide an excellent digital experience for constituents. 

 
Monmouthshire council has cited Monty as an overwhelming success.  Six months since launch, it has:
 
  1. Autonomously helped 36,405 online users and processed 232,839 customer messages
  2. Grown to handle 94% of website queries (which make up 54% of all queries received by the council), winning back hundreds of hours for agents at the contact centre.
Abigail Barton, Communications & Engagement Manager at Monmouthshire Council, said:  "Something that our Community Hub staff talk about is that Monty can deal with the missed bin collections, so their time is freed up to find a homeless person a home." 
 
An extra benefit of Monty's automation success is in how much PR activity it's created. Since launch, Monty and Monmouthshire Council have gained recognition through:
 

Free Automation Strategy Guide for Local Government


Any new technology can be daunting at first.  Let us help change that.  Our free guide shows you how to build a l
ocal government automation strategy that: 

-  Cuts costs
-  Supports colleagues
-  Delivers community services sustainably

Robot process automation:  Improve CX by making the small things seamless


San Diego County's (SDC) division – the Health and Human Services Agency - uses CalWIN, a state-approved program to help with the administration of health and social programmes.

To deliver community services, agents using CalWIN must manually verify relevant information from as many as 500 different forms. This process was as time-consuming as it sounds and limited the number of service requests that SDC agents could complete in a given day.

Working with Automation Anywhere to quicken the process, SDC used robot process automation (RPA) to create a faster, more seamless experience for both agents and end-users.

Using RPA, an SDC agent can retrieve all supporting documents from CalWIN (and other relevant systems) and start a service verification process by typing a single hotkey.

Freeing more time for decision-making and saving countless hours for their 2,000 agents, SDC's automation project resulted in:

  1. Immediate ROI upon launching the automation programme
  2. A 25% rise in turnaround time
  3. A 30% rise in agent productivity
  4. Fewer human errors and zero process automation errors

Chatbots:  Not just for customers


Chatbots are often considered a customer-facing tool, used in the same
way as 'Monty' is on the Monmouthshire Council website.  Carmarthenshire Council recognised , however, chatbots have been recognised as an invaluable internal resource to make IT support more efficient. 

Repetitive and monotonous IT processes including password resets, login issues and equipment repairs are some of the most common, and take up as much as 30% of IT professionals' time.

Using We Build Bots' Tickit software - a helpdesk ticketing automation tool - the council deployed a conversational AI at its IT helpdesk. Users are asked a series of troubleshooting questions to help solve their problem without human intervention or creating a ticket. 

In fact, Tickit's self-serve chatbot technology can accelerate up to 80% of interactions, needless of any human-intervention.

Free RPA 101 Discovery Workshop


Interested in automation but unsure where to start?   Our free RPA 101 Discovery Workshop enables you to learn more about automation, without any up-front cost.  By the end of it, you will know:

 
  • What automation is
  • What it can do for you
  • How it can benefit across your organisation
  • Have a list of vetted processes that can be automated
Once the workshop is over, you can decide whether you need boxxe to assist you with the next steps, or go forward on your own.  Either way, you'll be ready to start automating.

Automation - Three creative uses by local government

If you would like further information on how boxxe can help your business, contact us on the number below or fill in the form and we will be in touch.
 

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