Description: My personal blog
I recently blogged about some personal research that I’d carried out to help identify which councils in the UK and Ireland are using webchat and chatbots . In this blog post I will share some additional research I have done on chatbots. Nothing very ground breaking, but I hope it will help councils who are beginning their chatbot journey and want to find out more. I have created a new Airtable which lists all councils currently using chatbots . A very big thank you to localgov colleagues who got in touch an
Chatbots are variably presented by councils as digital assistants, smart assistants, web assistant, virtual agents and so on. It would be good for consistency if councils could agree on one title which best describes the work of a chatbot, but I doubt that will happen.
Several councils has chosen to give their chatbots a name, perhaps to personalise them and make them more approachable. My favourite names are Oggie at Bridgend County Borough Council and Mona, a bilingual chatbot (Welsh/English) from the Isle of Anglesey. The chatbot at Telford & Wrekin Council appears to have a split personality, being variously known as TelfBot and Tom.