Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council

We would like to explore whether language interaction technology can be utalised to improve the customer experience.

Empowering customers to access the right information at the right time will help to realise efficiencies in the operational delivery of customers services for low and medium need interactions. The capacity this releases can then be redirected to add greater value to high, more complex, need enquiries to improve the customer experience and support the most vulnerable. It may also be possible to make cashable savings releasing funding to reinvest elsewhere in the organisation, or to help achieve savings targets.

Using co-design and service design techniques we propose to document existing customer contact points, existing pain points and opportunities for improvement. Once mapped we will then consider whether there are opportunities for existing service processes to be streamlined or improved through the utalisation of language interaction, artificial intelligence and other innovative technology.

To complete the service design process, we will establish a Service Design Team, which will consist of a mix of service users, staff members and other key stakeholders.

We will then provide facilitative support to undertake a series of sprints to first capture existing processes and then to develop opportunities for service improvement.

Discovery evidence

We continue to see an increase in customer contact across all contact channels with the greatest level of growth across on-line contact channels. The nature of queries, particularly around adult social care, safeguarding and children’s services has also become more complex so we need to strip away the transactional activity to focus on these areas.

At the same time resources have been reduced and in particular the number of people available to support first contact has declined.

A new approach is therefore required.

National and international research indicates that there is substantial opportunity to deliver organisational efficiencies and better outcomes thought the use or language interaction technology.