EMPOWER RESIDENTS WITH AI-POWERED PHONE ASSISTANTS FOR A MORE EFFICIENT AND PERSONALISED CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Phone remains the most important channel for many public sector organisations. SMART: Phone brings generative AI to your telephony infrastructure, enabling callers to speak naturally, get instant answers, and be routed intelligently — reducing wait times and improving first-contact resolution.
Unlike generic voice automation, SMART: Phone is grounded in your organisation's own policies, processes, and service rules. It understands natural speech across accents and dialects, organisations choose up to ten languages from a library of 108 to reflect the communities they serve, and it gets more capable over time as usage data informs continuous improvement.
FEATURES
Demand Deflection: Handles routine inbound calls without human intervention, reducing pressure on frontline teams and freeing staff for cases that require human judgement.
Natural Language Understanding: Understands conversational speech across accents and dialects — users speak naturally rather than navigating menu options.
Grounded Knowledge: Responses are grounded in your organisation's own content and service rules from day one, ensuring accuracy and consistency across every call.
Multilingual Support: Organisations select from a library of 108, providing support in the languages most relevant to the people they serve.
Seamless Transfer to Human Agents: When a call requires human involvement, SMART: Phone transfers the caller to the right team with full context carried across — across more than 40 departments where needed.
24/7 Availability: Available at any time without additional staffing, providing consistent service outside normal working hours.
Integration: Works with your existing telephony infrastructure and line-of-business systems.
Continuous Improvement: Performance is monitored and refined over time through a structured governance and approval process.
BENEFITS
Reduced inbound call volumes reaching frontline teams
Shorter call waiting times for routine queries
24/7 coverage without additional resource
Staff time redirected to cases that require human judgement
Consistent, accurate responses grounded in current organisational knowledge
Service accessible in the languages your communities speak
Derby City Council
AI assistants, Darcie, servicing the Council's customer service centre, and Ali, serving Derby Homes, are delivering significant impact across customer services. Together, they have achieved a call deflection rate of 56%, helping to reduce pressure on frontline teams. Since go-live in April 2022, they have handled over 2.9 million questions and supported the processing of more than 1.4 million phone calls. Beyond answering citizen queries, they can also direct calls to over 40 different departments. Providing round-the-clock assistance for council and housing services, this AI-driven transformation has also helped to identify £12 million in savings, demonstrating substantial operational efficiency and value.
HOW WE APPLIED IT
SMART: Phone AI empowers organisations to manage high call volumes while delivering exceptional services to customers. Our AI-powered self-service system equips customers with access to information and support on over 1,000 council topics and services. By leveraging advanced natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, the system understands and responds to user enquiries in a human-like manner, improving customer satisfaction and increasing the efficiency of your services.