How can we connect customers to their local bureau reliably and quickly?
Operational costs have been reduced by 90%.
Faster support, lower costs
There are 59 local & independent Citizens Advice Bureaux, organised to serve community needs with local knowledge. During the pandemic, the Scottish Citizens Advice Helpline was established as a central number for advice.
Customers had to wait for a callback from their local bureau which could take 24 hours. Volunteers were asked to staff the service and manually route calls - this was unpopular and cost ~£450k/year.
HelpFirst evaluated ‘best-of-breed’ suppliers and leveraged PolyAI for swift innovation and implementation of an AI voice assistant. This interacts with the customer over the phone and routes their calls automatically.
- Understands and speaks in Scottish accents
- Custom-built Scottish postcode extractor
- Reduced average connection time from several days to 30 seconds, across 23,000 calls per quarter
- Reduced operational costs by ~90% (to only £40k/year) within 3 months of starting the project.
- Eradicated an unpopular and error-prone step from the process, freeing up advisors for front-line work
- Improved customer EDI (geography, language, literacy, mobility)
More case studies
AI transforming Childline's work
How can we understand the potential of AI in our organisation?
We demonstrated how Childline could handle 30% more counselling sessions per year.
Prioritising urgent cases with AI
How can we help advisors prioritise the most vulnerable?
The time taken to get up to speed on a case reduced from 15 mins to 30 seconds.
