Conversational AI Platform

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ("the Authority") is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy within the UK. As the UK’s biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age and disability benefits to around 20 million UK citizens. The Authority is committed to doing everything it can to enhance the overall citizen experience. Citizens contact the Authority wishing to start, validate, change or query their benefit claims. Citizens calling from within the UK contact the Authority via free of charge Non-Geographic Numbers (“NGNs”) or via web chat when wishing to discuss their individual circumstances with regards to a type of service/benefit they have with the Authority. NGNs are currently answered by advisors within the Authority’s contact centre, which is the largest platform of its kind across all UK government departments and is one of the largest in Europe. The contact centre managed service ensures that all twenty-seven business groups, spread across around 200 locations, can connect with and support citizens, whilst also offering specialist services such as debt recovery and support for citizens with complex needs. Conversational AI Platform (“CaiP”) is a natural language call steering (“NLCS”) solution which allows citizens to speak naturally to the platform so it can determine why our citizens are calling. This enables the guiding of the citizen to the most effective outcome, whether that is to the right agent first time or to personalised call deflection and/or self-service offerings. This should enhance the citizen experience and produce operational efficiencies. The CaiP service will integrate with the Authority’s contact centre to help better serve millions of citizens by improving how DWP handles inbound calls, route queries intelligently, and offer self-service options.