Birmingham City Council Case Study

In September 2023, when Birmingham City Council issued Section 114 notices—the local government equivalent of declaring bankruptcy—it faced a staggering financial challenge. With debts of around £1 billion, the Council needed to find more than £250 million in savings over the coming 12 months. Birmingham developed plans to release capacity within the Council and make many other changes to how it operated. That involved rethinking how public services are provided. Its challenge was to find ways to increase efficiency while meeting the needs and expectations of a population that’s come to expect self-service options, 24/7 access to services, modern apps and more. It also needed to be ready to manage the inevitable questions from residents about the changes that would be taking place.

The challenge: Seeking an automated way to handle thousands of calls with fewer staff

As a partner that has supported Birmingham on many projects over the years, PwC began working with the Council to help it identify ways to do more with less as part of addressing its cost challenges. One area we focused on was how to improve efficiency and save costs related to the many phone enquiries that the city receives daily.

The main switchboard of Birmingham City Council receives over 100,000 calls a year from residents with a wide variety of questions, reports and complaints. Among the departments that receive the largest volumes of calls are environment, highways, planning and waste, and many of those calls cover the same kinds of concerns: Does a property improvement require planning permission? How to arrange for waste collection when a bin has been missed? How to report a pothole? Can the city send a crew to remove rats from a garden?

For many of these enquiries, the solution often involves taking basic information to return with an answer or directing a caller to the appropriate online form for requesting a service. In fact, a significant number of calls are for questions that can already be answered online, which leaves employees with less time to handle more complex or more demanding requests. We saw this as an opportunity to develop an automated solution that could improve efficiency while also saving time and costs. So we started collaborating with Birmingham City Council with the goal of quickly delivering a proof of concept.

The solution: Developing a solution that quickly directs citizens to the information they need

Using an agile delivery approach and our expertise in voice automation, we worked with the Council to understand how staff handled enquiries, what citizens needed when they called and how an effective voice automation system could be developed and deployed in a short timeframe. We met with staff and customer groups, and conducted research to understand the needs of vulnerable groups in particular, to identify the key elements that such a system needed to deliver.

We identified some types of interactions where an automated solution actually makes it easier for people to report issues such as potholes. Rather than having to describe a location on the phone, it’s faster and simpler for callers to receive a text message with a link to a website featuring a map on which they can pin a location.

In other cases, a caller might need more guidance first—say, when calling with an enquiry about what kinds of planning permission they might require. To address such situations, we focused on developing a chatbot that could start by asking a series of questions. Based on the caller’s answers, the automated system then generates a text message with a link to the relevant form they need to fill out. The goal was to more quickly connect people with the information they need, in a way that requires fewer resources from the Council. It’s an approach that is much faster and more convenient than having to wait in a phone queue to speak with a person who would then ask the same questions and direct the caller to the same form. And it frees up staff time to focus on more demanding enquiries from residents.

We built a proof of concept using leading capabilities from Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of our strategic collaboration with AWS. This meant using Amazon Connect, an AI-powered cloud contact centre, and Amazon Lex to provide advanced voice- and text-based chatbots. The proof of concept also uses a variety of other cloud-based technologies from AWS that make it possible to deliver solutions in a matter of weeks, with pricing that varies according to usage.

The outcome: A successful system that’s designed for continuous improvement

Birmingham City Council was able to deploy the solution quickly, starting with a few key departments but then scaling fast after the return on investment and value hypothesis had been tested. The project began in December 2023 and the first voice prototype services for some departments began rolling out by early February, enabling the city to immediately begin reaping efficiency benefits. It reduced call demands on staff across the organisation—a 80% reduction for the main switchboard, 70% for planning, 50% for waste, 40% for highways and 50% for environmental health.

The Council can use a dashboard to view all of the data that’s generated by the automated system, as well as real-time BI reports on the system’s performance. Using the dashboard, the Council can also view a wide variety of metrics and map caller interactions by location and postcode, helping to identify trends in, for example, missed bins during waste collection. Out of 16,000 cases raised via voice automation for waste management and missed bins, the city was able to identify one ward with the highest number of cases, enabling it to put a greater focus on driving improvements in that area.

We designed the solution with the goal of achieving continuous improvement from day one, and have delivered a number of improvements since the system went live. For instance, by analysing user data, we can identify so-called utterances—words, phrases or accents that the system wasn’t initially set up to recognise—and then fine-tune the solution to support those. The switchboard system currently handles calls with an accuracy rate of 60–70%.

Birmingham City Council is now working to roll out voice automation across 12 other departments. And the chatbot features a voice that residents selected through an online survey as being the most friendly-sounding and engaging.

“When we started this work, I couldn’t imagine how much we’d get done in such a short space of time,” says Wendy Griffiths, the Council’s assistant director for customer services and the business support division. “The whole team has worked incredibly hard to produce a fantastic outcome. And members and Commissioners are rightly impressed with what we’ve been able to achieve.”

Sheraz Yaqub, head of customer experience and programme, adds,

“Voice automation in Birmingham is about better use of resources but not at the expense of customer experience. Through this project, we’ve been able to release capacity to focus on other priorities, while giving residents what they want and need. At the same time, we’ve been able to learn by doing and so equip ourselves to replicate this success in other areas with increasing self-sufficiency.”

Sheraz Yaqub,Head of customer experience and programme

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