Somerset Council Customer Services are celebrating after hearing they are double winners!

The service has won the Best Transformation Programme 2023 in the Southwest Contact Centre Forum Awards and the Genesys Customer Innovation Award 2023 despite tough competition from 100 global entries from a diverse range of companies.

These awards recognised the exceptional work of bringing five contact teams and associated technologies together during the unitary process and developing an innovative Welcome Bot*, whilst continuing to provide a seamless transition in service for customers.

To help residents, Customer Services were able to:

• create a single number (0300 123 2224) to end customer confusion over which council and department does what.
• Introduce a single telephony system with a Welcome Bot* – Artificial intelligence powered automation, freeing-up staff to apply the human touch to deal with our most vulnerable and at-risk residents.

The Somerset Council Customer Strategy sets out a journey of improvement with further changes to come, but the development of a Welcome Bot and rollout of technology at the pace demanded by Local Government Reorganisation has been applauded by all in the Council and recognised in these two awards categories.

*A bot — short for robot and also called an internet bot is a computer program that operates as an agent for a user or other program or to simulate a human activity. Bots are normally used to automate certain tasks, meaning they can run without specific instructions from humans.