Dan Pearce from Telsolutions discusses how local authorities are modernising resident communications, collections and customer engagement. Local Authorities are seeing rising cost and declining effectiveness of post, changing customer expectations, fragmented legacy systems and the operational barriers to digital transformation.
We discuss practical approaches including departmental pilots, verified RCS messaging, WhatsApp, robotic process automation and generative AI virtual assistants.
Also explored are the forthcoming changes to council tax collection, the need for earlier and more proactive engagement, and how technology could help local authorities manage increasing service demand without corresponding increases in resources.
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Key Take Aways
- Local authorities face a growing structural challenge from rising postage costs and declining delivery performance.
- Delayed postal delivery can invalidate time-sensitive notices and disrupt collections and payment processes.
- Customer expectations are increasingly shaped by private-sector digital experiences, widening the service gap with local government.
- Communications should enable customers to understand and complete an action within the same channel, rather than forcing them to move between paper, telephone and websites.
- Reducing friction can improve engagement by making payments, enquiries and other transactions easier to complete.
- Fragmented systems and departmental data silos prevent organisations from developing a complete view of residents and their circumstances.
- A single view of debt can support better outcomes by combining information across services, although this remains rare within local government.
- Transformation is more likely to succeed when introduced through a focused departmental use case with measurable costs and performance benefits.
- Technology propositions must be adapted to each department’s objectives, customer circumstances and operating model.
- Verified and conversational channels, including RCS and WhatsApp, are expected to become increasingly important as confidence in traditional SMS declines.
- Automation may create value by absorbing demand, improving accessibility and reducing repeat contact, rather than simply reducing employee numbers.
- Financial and resource pressures will require organisations to adopt practical technology overlays rather than wait for large-scale replacement of core legacy systems.
Innovation
- Verified RCS communications: Using authenticated sender identities to provide greater reassurance that messages are genuine.
- Conversational WhatsApp services: Allowing customers to move from proactive notification into a two-way transaction or support conversation.
- Generative AI virtual assistants: Replacing traditional, rules-based chatbots with assistants capable of managing more natural customer conversations.
- Voice assistants: Using AI-fronted voice services to handle routine interactions where the customer still prefers to telephone.
- Robotic process automation: Overlaying RPA bots onto legacy systems to automate repetitive tasks without replacing the core platform.
- Middleware integration: Connecting departmental systems that were not originally designed to communicate with one another.
- Single-view debt models: Combining data across services to improve understanding of a resident’s overall position.
- Proactive payment reminders: Applying techniques comparable to medical appointment and medication reminders to help residents remain on track.
- Practitioner-configurable technology: Enabling operational teams to configure services around customer and process requirements rather than relying entirely on ICT development.
- Pilot-and-scale implementation: Proving the business case in one department before expanding the solution across the organisation.
- Cross-authority best-practice sharing: Reusing successful approaches to avoid each authority beginning with a blank sheet of paper.
Key Statistics
- Approximately 77% of first-class mail was said to arrive on time.
- Some second-class post was reported to take 10–12 days to reach residents.
- One supplier discussed in the conversation was estimated to support more than 150 local authorities, although the speaker qualified the figure.
- Council tax is traditionally collected across 10 months, with a two-month break.
- Proposed changes would make payment over 12 months the default option.
- Council tax increases of approximately 5% were described as common, with some authorities reportedly increasing bills by around 10%.
- Local government reorganisation was expected to develop across 2027, 2028 and 2029.
- Approximately 33% of local authority contact was estimated to involve customers seeking information.
- The speaker estimated that around 60% of contact concerned information or support and might not require human intervention; the precise split between the categories was not clearly stated.
- Within five years, the majority of interactions at larger authorities were expected to move away from traditional human-handled voice contact.
Key Discussion Points
- Rising postage prices and deteriorating delivery performance are weakening the viability of letter-led communication.
- Delayed delivery creates particular risks for demands, reminders and notices with defined response periods.
- Local authorities often lack residents’ telephone numbers and email addresses because these are not routinely captured when someone moves into an area.
- Legacy case-management platforms were primarily designed around letters and basic text messaging.
- Residents increasingly expect immediate, digital and conversational service comparable with their private-sector experiences.
- Requiring customers to move from a letter to a telephone, keyboard or website introduces avoidable friction.
- Departmental systems, operating models and data remain fragmented, limiting the development of a complete resident view.
- Data-sharing restrictions and privacy requirements can make cross-departmental integration more complex.
- Focused departmental pilots provide a more practical entry point than organisation-wide technology programmes involving numerous stakeholders.
- RCS, WhatsApp and virtual assistants could create an integrated journey from trusted notification to two-way engagement and transaction completion.
- More proactive digital contact will be required to support residents who miss council tax payments and to prevent matters escalating into enforcement.
- Over the next five years, AI-fronted conversations, automation and digital messaging are expected to become central to managing increasing demand with constrained resources.
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