Slough council’s new chatbot to help provide ‘seamless digital service’

A new chatbot service has been launched by Slough council to help it reduce demand for call centre services and provide a 'seamless digital service'.

The Slough Automated Resource Assistant – SARA – appears on the council’s website and is designed to answer questions from bin collections to council tax.

It is hoped that SARA, which is available 24 hours a day, will resolve questions that the council says could be resolved online instead of calling its customer contact service.

Councillor Mabu Shaik (Cons, Langley Meads), said: “This is another step in providing a seamless digital service to residents.

“The chatbot will provide quick, concise and accurate solutions and answers to queries. 

“It will also encourage residents to sign up for self-service portals including Slough Self Service Portal and the Education Self Service Portal, so they can access their information independently.

The chatbot is designed to that learn from its responses and over time, develop a more effective service.

Cllr Shaik continued: “I encourage residents to give it a try if they have a question about environmental services, school admissions or council tax.

“We will be monitoring how well it works and will potentially look to extend the number of topics it can assist with.”