This innovation harnesses one of the latest emerging technologies - voice assistants and a voice channel to expose existing local council services. The current status-quo of the telephone-based menu and IVR systems can be frustrating and slow for customers to use, especially when there are several service options and responses required from the customer. Direct access to a council service based on keywords that a resident will say (e.g. ‘when is my bin collection day?’) to the voice assistant is not only more convenient (e.g. for disabled and elderly residents), it is much faster too. The ubiquity of voice assistant software and hardware on various fixed and mobile devices is expected to grow rapidly in the next 5 years.

Improving accessibility for web and phone services is a constant battle and with the release of Amazon Echo, AVDC saw an opportunity to use this new technology to the benefit of residents. AVDC received accreditation in mid-September from Amazon meaning that AVDC is the first council in the UK to receive this. Nine processes have been written and have been accepted through the accreditation process. Seven are information based and two are transactional. These include information on the leadership of the council and arranging an assisted bin collection through Alexa. The nine processes are not the finished product as the skills will continue to be refined and new further processes based on customer feedback will be developed.

As a council AVDC do not have sufficient in-house expertise to undertake the technical work needed to get the processes up and running. Arcus Global, the development partner, has done the coding/development with AVDC’s guidance providing the council insight to Arcus’s technical knowledge i.e. what will work for customers - common language used, current council processes, nuances which need accommodating for in the coding. With the accreditation, AVDC is working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) group. This has very much been a ‘learn as you go’ process as this is a council first, neither AVDC nor AWS had experience in working on council-based processes. Similarly to Arcus, constant communication was key to successfully marrying together their technical expertise and AVDC’s council-specific requirements

All 450 of AVDC’s staff and 59 members have been approached to input to the project. Drop in Q&A and live demonstration sessions were held to gather feedback vital to correctly creating the processes for the services required. As previously mentioned, AVDC’s summer roadshows were specifically themed around the voice-control program to highlight the work and gather resident feedback from multiple demographics to aid in the program’s further development. Such is the scope for service improvement held in voice control technology, AVDC has been invited to other councils and numerous events to talk about their work. This has not been a self-promotion exercise, rather it enables the team to gather vital input from peers to improve the technology. Furthermore, the more councils who take up voice control usage through Amazon Echo will benefit all participating councils as a whole as more resource will be dedicated to developing the Alexa skills software.

AVDC’s use of voice control has been the main focus of their summer roadshow program. Throughout the summer (2017), from June to September, the council has appeared at events around the district with a marquee and Amazon Echo in tow to help publicize the voice-control program and receive immediate feedback from residents. The breadth of events visited ensured staff was able to meet with a wide demographic of residents and hear their views on the council using voice control, as well as assessing their general knowledge around the new technology. Customer insight is vital to this project as resident reactions to AVDC using Alexa and knowledge of voice control, in general, will influence the future direction of the project. Overall feedback has been overwhelmingly positive as the message of broadening the accessibility of AVDC services was widely praised, no matter the level of technical understanding. AVDC is hoping to gain further and more detailed feedback from future events to help further expand the current processes and an overall number of processes available.

The biggest challenge so far encountered has been the use of language – essentially making sure Alexa understands the variations in which questions can be asked. An example of a language problem would be the similarity in sound between ‘council’ and ‘cancel’, the latter causing the command to cease. This is where the extensive customer insight work with various stakeholder groups, namely residents, staff, and members has proved invaluable in working around these types of issues. AVDC responded to this by expanding the quality of the skill to be more specific and pick up on nuances of language. This information was passed on to Arcus for coding the skill so Alexa appropriately understands the spoken command. Another issue encountered has been the certification process which, as the first UK council to undertake voice control, is completely new to AVDC and AWS. Continued dialogue and analysis between all partners has ensured the project stayed on track.

Social acceptability first and foremost. It’s a new concept so needed resident buy-in to be a success. This service will only currently be accessible to those who are using Amazon Echo, which limits the amounts of residents who can benefit, but as Alexa grows so does the reach of council processes. General take-up of Alexa by other organizations will contribute to the skills base overall and further adds to credibility – the more people who have Amazon Echos the more people available to benefit from AVDC processes. Constant development and improvement based on up-to-date feedback will be needed to ensure AVDC’s processes stay relevant and accessible. Plus to further develop services investment will be required.

There is high potential to replicate these services across many of the UK local authorities and councils, combined authorities and city-level administrations, sharing best practice and experience from existing deployments. There is further potential to expand voice services to other central and local government services beyond the examples listed.

If for whatever reason the Amazon Echo doesn’t prove a long-term success we have considerable learning from this project to be able to transfer the processes to other voice channels as well as other voice-assistant based platforms (e.g. Google Home, Apple Homepod, Microsoft Cortana).