Our chatbot is called Helen and can assist with common enquiries about Council Tax, revenue and benefits, libraries, registrars and adult social care. If you've got a quick question, have a chat with Helen and see how she can help you!
What is a chatbot?
A chatbot is an artificial intelligence (AI) digital assistant. It's designed to simulate human conversation using pre-calculated responses to common customer questions.
How do I use the chatbot?
Simply click on the link to the chatbot at the bottom right of the website and type in your question. The chatbot will then take a couple of seconds to respond. If she can answer it, she will, or may ask for more information.
Why have you introduced Helen?
We encourage customers who are willing and able to contact us via our digital services first. This includes online forms and now Helen the chatbot. This will help to leave our phone lines available to respond to calls from our more vulnerable residents, those unable to contact us digitally and those with more complex enquiries.
What can I ask Helen?
For our initial phase, we have provided a simple interface that allows you to ask your question and Helen will respond to it if she can. We'll be extending the range of subjects in the future and provide options to ask the chatbot questions.
Why isn't the chatbot available for every council service on the website?
You'll notice that Helen is only able to provide information on certain services at present including:
Council Tax
Revenue and Benefits
Libraries
Registrars
Adult Social Care
This is because we're running a pilot on just a few areas to allow us to better understand how our customers react to the chatbot and to help us gather feedback on what subjects and features you might like to see introduced. If we find that our customers like to use the chat functionality, we may extend its use across the website as an additional channel.
Helen - our new chat bot - privacy notice
Personal information usage:
In using Helen (our bot) we may collect and store the information you input to the bot (conversations). These conversations will be stored for 30 days and then deleted. This could include things like your postcode and address depending on your enquiry. If you choose to leave us feedback, that will also be held in the same way, but we will not ask for any personal information as part of that feedback process.
Will we share the data you submit to the bot?
The information you submit to the bot will not be shared with any internal or external partners, with the exception of feedback if you choose to provide that. If you do choose to provide feedback, this information will be reviewed by the Contact Centre and shared with our internal ICT & Digital section who can then use it to enhance the bot to see how we can improve it. The bot has been developed on the Microsoft Copilot platform.
How will we store the information given to Helen?
The information that is submitted to the bot is stored in the Microsoft Azure Cloud and deleted after 30 days.
