By Jason Lewis, Local Democracy Reporter
Residents will be able to report missed bin collections and make complaints… over the phone to an artificial intelligence voice bot.
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The technology will allow residents to call at any time and talk to a humanoid voice, which will log the details of the issue.
Council bosses said a new online customer portal will allow people to track the status of their report.
It is hoped this could be rolled out for every complaint made to the service centre, but initially it will focus on waste.
Photo: AI-assisted using ChatGPT. Composite/Civic Centre: bitternepark.info
Plans for the use of AI voice automation were outlined at an overview and scrutiny management committee meeting on Thursday, March 19.
Carol Maclellan, executive director of resident services, said telephony system provider Storm were implementing the technology across the contracts they held.
She said: “The service centre has been getting demonstrations from Storm and they are developing the system now.
“For waste it is relatively new technology but if you call your bank, it is not new technology at all, is it?
“The actual voice recognition technology exists and works really well out there.”
Ms Maclellan said the voice automation would need to be integrated with the council’s new customer portal, which is around 12 weeks away from coming in.
Explaining what residents would experience, she said: “It stops the need for you to log on and do something.
“You will be able to talk to an artificial agent who will essentially fill in the form for you and get your complaint into the process or your missed bin into the process.
“You will then be able to log into the customer portal and have a look and see exactly what’s happened to your request because I do understand the frustration from councillors and residents that once they’ve filled in a form or called us up, there is no way of tracking what’s actually happened to their request at all.”
Details on when the AI voice automation system will go live were not confirmed at the meeting.
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