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The proven use cases for using an AI ass...

The proven use cases for using an AI assistant in local government in 2025

Trending and new

6 min read

11th Nov 2024

Natalie Smithson
AI enthusiast | Tea addict | Focused on using AI assistants to win the working week
Illustrated image of a large white building with red roof and trim, much like a local council or government building

Only 14% of local councils currently use chatbots to support their customers, yet those who do are saving tens of thousands of pounds, increasing customer satisfaction, drastically reducing call volume, and giving their community 24-hour support.

Find out who’s using AI in local government, what they’re using it for, and how it’s changed everything for their internal teams as well as their customers.

Jump to section
Keeping up with AI automation in local government Local councils learn from each other what works well The proven use cases for AI chat and voice Leaders in AI for local government Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

TL;DR

  • 59 local councils across the UK and Ireland currently use AI assistants
  • Coventry City Council is answering more calls while spending less money
  • 89% of local councils use an AI assistant to manage enquiries about missed bins
  • Barking & Dagenham Borough Council is using AI to answer 98% of missed bin enquiries and hit 533% ROI in less than a year
  • Councils are using a combination of chat and voice AI assistants with customer satisfaction going up as much as 67%
  • Watford Council is using AI IVR to route calls with greater accuracy
  • South Cambridgeshire notes the importance of systems integration, enterprise-grade security, scalability, and upfront pricing so you know exactly what you’re paying for with no hidden costs

Keeping up with AI automation in local government

HubSpot found 86% of leaders in customer service agree “AI has positively impacted CSAT” (Customer Satisfaction Score). With AI assistants now so affordable, easy to create, and as easy to use as any other digital platform, there’s every reason for organisations of all sizes to make use of them, whether they’re for profit, non-profit, or serving the public.

Digital Health Check identified 59 local councils across the UK and Ireland currently using AI assistants and, while we already know chatbot usage doubled after the pandemic, it looks like adoption in local government has slowed since then with only 5 of these chatbots being introduced between 2023-24.

In our 10 years of experience creating AI assistants, we’ve seen AI transition from a code-heavy, specialist resource only tech companies and enterprise would use, to a readily available tool the world is overcome by, following the launch of ChatGPT and generative AI. Ultimately, this shock arrival of GenAI combined with a lack of knowledge about how to use LLMs like GPT safely has provoked some fear as well as awe at what this powerful technology can do.

Photo of Abbie Heslep, Managing Director at EBI.AI. Abbie is caucasian with dark brown hair and wears a pink top. She is smiling at the camera.

Abbie Heslop

Managing Director at EBI.AI

Now the commotion around generative AI has quietened down and business leaders and public servants recognise its strengths and limitations, local councils are looking for robust, affordable AI assistants they can rely on to help solve issues around overwhelming contact volumes while managing an ever-dwindling budget, and at the same time, introduce LLMs and GenAI safely.

CASE STUDY

How Coventry City Council use AI to answer more calls while spending less money

Find out how easy it was for Coventry City Council to launch an AI assistant and get phone calls down 22% year on year, and email enquiries down by 20%.

Read the case study

Local councils learn from each other what works well

One of the most popular reasons for local councils to use an AI assistant is getting missed bin enquiries under control. Of all the 61 councils currently on the Digital Health Check knowledge base, 54 of them use an AI assistant to manage bins and recycling.

Compare that to the handling of other tasks and services and the number is much lower:

  • Blue badges: 13 councils
  • Education: 12 councils
  • Registrars: 11 councils
  • Libraries: 9 councils
  • Street cleaning: 8 councils

It makes sense for local councils to explore new automated services together. Before AI became commonplace in business and public service, as it is today, we ran a Community AI programme for local government, so anything one council learnt would benefit all others. With a budget crisis and a duty to serve, it’s important local councils share the best resources and what’s working well for them, which is why we’re seeing such high numbers of the same use cases as they start to branch out from there.

Photo of Abbie Heslep, Managing Director at EBI.AI. Abbie is caucasian with dark brown hair and wears a pink top. She is smiling at the camera.

Abbie Heslop

Managing Director at EBI.AI

CASE STUDY

How Barking & Dagenham Borough Council use AI to answer 98% of missed bin enquiries

Learn how quickly the London council hit a 533% ROI on their AI assistant, expanding from waste and recycling to five other departments in less than a year (at no extra cost).

Read the case study

The proven use cases for AI chat and voice

As well as using an AI assistant to manage bin collections and waste, 46 local councils are using AI to tackle Council Tax enquiries with other popular use cases including housing, environmental health, elections, school admissions, roads, and social care. Every day, local government is finding new and inventive ways for AI to improve not only their speed of service but the experience of it too.

Chat-based AI

Only 20% of Barking & Dagenham Borough Council’s customers were satisfied using their website to find information, but when they introduced an AI assistant customer satisfaction shot up by 67%. Having worried whether their local community would respond well to using an AI assistant, this result encouraged the council to successfully extend chat-based AI services to more departments.

Voice-based AI

When Watford Council started exploring voice AI, it was sophisticated enough to turn around expensive, broken phone systems too, improving call routing and resolving queries instantly over the phone.

AI IVR

AI IVR is call routing using an AI assistant with natural language processing (NLP) to answer calls and recognise what customers are asking for over the phone. Councils can now route customer calls instantly to the right department using what they ask for in their own words, rather than force people to choose from limited options like Dial 1 for X and Dial 2 for Y.

AI telephony

Local government can take this a step further and add AI telephony. This has the AI assistant answer the query as well, giving out spoken information over the phone in a natural voice.

Learn more about AI telephony and hear some AI voices!

The most advanced AI assistants have a precise combination of technologies, which means they can be trained to learn how to recognise common customer requests in any language or dialect and become an expert in everything you do. They can be taught to carry out tasks for your teams using simple integrations with your everyday systems, carry out entire processes, and take payments or create records, over the phone and in chat-based messenger windows.

Leaders in AI for local government

Right now, only 24% of councils have shared information about why they launched an AI assistant and how it helps them, but it’s likely more will be revealed in time.

With AI developing so rapidly, we find digital leaders at local councils are happy to speak up about what they learn, not only to help other councils save their resources where they can and find the most intuitive platforms and systems, but also help their teams uncover all the opportunities available for contact centres to get ahead.

Photo of Abbie Heslep, Managing Director at EBI.AI. Abbie is caucasian with dark brown hair and wears a pink top. She is smiling at the camera.

Abbie Heslop

Managing Director at EBI.AI

Investigating chat and voice channels for AI-driven support, South Cambridgeshire District Council note the importance of implementing AI with care, so local government teams can take full advantage of the opportunities it presents them with to improve their working day without a hitch:

Only pay for what your use

Affordable AI is crucial for all local councils with the Local Government Association reporting a “£2.3 billion funding gap” for some next year. It’s vital you’re clear on exactly how much you’ll pay for AI platforms and tools when you go live with local council automation.

With the right tools in place, local governments across the UK are successfully automating tasks that have previously tied up all their time. They’re cutting costs at every turn, reducing stress for their contact centres, and delighting customers with a fast, reliable service, and able to offer their community support at any time of the day or night with the help of AI.

Become a leading local council in AI

If you’d like a personalised demo of AI Studio to see what an AI assistant can do for your council, whether it’s chat, voice, or a combination of both, for missed bins, Council Tax, or other use cases, speak to our friendly team to chat it all through.

Book a call

FAQs

Can it integrate with my existing CRM?

Yes, your AI assistant can integrate with any CRM you choose to use, even one you build yourselves.

Are you on G-Cloud 14?

Yes, we’re in all three categories for G-Cloud 14:

  • Hosting Services
  • Software Services
  • Support Services

Here’s a link to our page on gov.uk.

Can you transfer to our existing live chat?

Yes, an AI assistant simply adds to your network of tools, slotting into the systems you already use and may want to keep. Having worked in data management for 23 years, we’re experts in systems management and legacy system support, as well as AI, so you can rely on us to get everything seamlessly working together.

Should I start with AI telephony or website AI?

We recommend you start with a web-based AI assistant because it transforms your customer insights from the minute it goes live. You’ll learn everything customers want to know through the questions they ask your AI assistant, which can help you make informed decisions about what areas to focus on first to improve services. When you make those positive changes, this can dramatically reduce your call volume, which means you won’t need to take as many calls. Set up AI telephony armed with this information and it can effectively catch all the necessary calls that come through, modernising your phone systems and making those more efficient too, while taking pressure off your teams.

For the more sensitive, unusual, or complicated queries, there’s always live chat too (which is free on AI Studio) to direct people to a human agent over chat, or you can train your AI assistant to detect these kinds of queries over the phone and put customers straight through to your teams.

What's the difference between AI IVR and normal IVR?

Traditional IVR call routing for phone calls is based on options. Customers are asked to select from a rigid set of choices, like ‘Dial 1 for Council Tax’ and ‘Dial 2 for Waste and Recycling’. Where none of the choices offered are appropriate, or the customer has a more unusual query, they’re left with no options, or a general option that can mean they’re then transferred again to other departments until they find their answer.

AI IVR listens to what a customer asks for on the call to detect which department they should be routed to. That means they can ask for exactly what they want, using the words and phrasing they choose, and the AI assistant simply transfers them through to the right department instantly. This is achieved through AI training, which means we’ll teach your AI assistant to recognise exactly how you do things, and it’ll learn the right responses and actions to take based on real questions from your actual customers, just like your teams do.

Do you charge for add-ons?

All the features you’ll ever need to scale your AI assistant are included in AI Studio for all users, whether you have 10 or 10,000 customer requests a month:

  • Lives on any channel, from web to apps and SMS to socials
  • Full control over all customer-facing responses and content
  • Enterprise-grade security throughout
  • Speak to customers in 130+ languages
  • Easy API integration with all your favourite apps and tools
  • Free live chat with unlimited seats
  • Agnostic AI, so you get the best of all available technology
  • And more!

You pay monthly for your AI assistant with no hidden charges, bolt-ons or extra costs, so you can budget for it effectively and know exactly what you’re getting.

Is there a limit to the number of departments we can include?

There’s no limit to the amount of departments your AI assistant can work for. It can be trained on an infinite number of issues.

Barking & Dagenham Borough Council quickly moved from one department (Waste) to five more in bi-weekly intervals. In less than nine months, the AI assistant was successfully handling enquiries for six departments with a 98% success rate (no help from humans at all), reducing call volume significantly.

What's the normal procurement process?

Because we’re on G-Cloud 14, procurement is straightforward. Watford Council went live with AI telephony just six weeks after our first conversation to discuss what they needed.

So we can chat through the challenges you face today, book a call with our team. We’ll offer you a personalised demo to show you how an AI assistant could help solve your most pressing issues quickly and efficiently, and take it from there.