Case Study: Citizens Advice Scotland achieves faster local advice routing with PolyAI

How the Citizens Advice Network in Scotland is providing better, faster support with PolyAI

Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS), Scotland’s largest independent advice network, needed a way to connect callers to local advisers during the Covid-19 pandemic after bureaux were forced to close and a national helpline could no longer easily route people to their nearest office. Working with PolyAI and SIDE Labs, CAS looked for a better way to handle hyper-local queries and reduce delays for people needing free, impartial advice.

PolyAI implemented a voice assistant for the helpline that used spoken language understanding, Scottish-accent-friendly dialogue, and a custom postcode extractor to identify the caller’s location and route them to the right local Citizens Advice Bureau. The result was a much faster service: callers who previously might wait up to five days for a callback could reach a local adviser in under 30 seconds, helping CAS deliver local support over the phone with greater efficiency and accessibility.

Citizens Advice Scotland

Jane Adams

Chief Executive of Perth