Babergh and Mid Suffolk District Council

We have invested in a significant programme of digital transformation with respect to our planning service. The two Councils now have one single integrated planning system which has enabled a more efficient delivery of service, able to cope with the demands of increasing applications. It is recognised that nationally and particularly within Local Government it is increasingly difficult to recruit and retain a skilled planning workforce, and it is imperative that the skilled people resources are utilised in the most efficient way.
With the stretch on resources and our aspirations to enhance our digital offering, we would like to explore what possibilities artificial intelligence/Chat Bots could bring to our customer service offering with respect to our planning service, with the ability to learn and develop a framework for its application to other service teams.
We believe that with some investment in technology that is already widely used in the private sector, not only could we improve satisfaction and keep a pace with our customers growing digital expectations we could also reduce more traditional costly forms of contact, freeing up either time or money for value activities.
We want to discover how we can best use chat bots to transition customers seamless to a human agent or even answer simple queries entirely electronically.