Case Study: Dacorum Borough Council achieves a single-number automated switchboard and 85% first-attempt call routing with Netcall's ContactPortal

Automated Speech Bot for Single Number at Dacorum

Dacorum Borough Council, the local authority for the Borough of Dacorum in West Hertfordshire, faced significant budget pressures and an unwieldy switchboard that forced residents to dial different direct numbers for each service. To implement a single-number strategy and reduce operator workload, Dacorum chose Netcall’s ContactPortal automated speech bot.

Netcall implemented ContactPortal using intelligent voice recognition to route callers who simply say the name of the person or service they need. In its first month ContactPortal handled 25,036 calls—75% routed correctly without operator intervention, 12% requested an operator and 4% were passed on for silence/unclear speech—and by September 2020 it was routing 85% of requests correctly on first attempt, freeing operators to focus on complex queries while allowing Dacorum to tune and expand recognition over time.

Dacorum Borough Council

Tracy Lancashire

Team Leader