Renfrewshire council’s AI adviser wins public service innovation award

Renfrewshire council’s AI-powered digital adviser took home the Digital Public Services Award at Holyrood’s annual Scottish Public Services Award (SPSAs) ceremony last week.  

Known as Millie, the artificial intelligence phone answering assistant launched in November 2024 to handle routine customer enquiries.

Speaking to Holyrood, Julie McBride, service delivery manager for Renfrewshire council said:“We were quite blown away, to be honest. We didn't really expect it, but I think it's huge recognition for the kind of work that the team have put into getting Millie to where she is today.”

Since its launch, Millie has handled over 240,000 customer calls, answering questions on basic council services like waste collection and council tax. The system resolves over 30 per cent of callers’ questions, freeing up phone operators to focus on more complex queries.

Gary Innes, senior service delivery manager at the council, explained how the system works: “When customers call the telephone number, they'll get the welcome message, ‘Thanks for calling Renfrewshire. I'm Millie, I'm the digital advisor and I'm here to help.’ Millie then uses her natural language model that sits in the back to work out what the customer is asking.”

This system has led to 35,000 fewer calls to the council’s contact centre, compared to the previous year. If a caller has a question that Millie is unable to answer, the call is then routed through to a human, who can provide callers with the personalised support they need.

According to McBride, the system has been well received by the public in Renfrewshire, with minimal numbers of complaints lodged compared with the number of calls received. Callers who do have trouble with the system can be coached on how to interact with it by human operators, who can give tips on how to get the most out of the system.

McBride said: “The team are kind of trained to educate the customers and tell them how to speak [to Millie] just as you would speak to a human. So, we haven't had a massive amount of pushback at all. You do get some people that just struggle to adapt to the kind of digital way of working, but you're always going to get that. But as a whole, the public have been absolutely fine.”

The SPSAs highlight the contribution made to Scotland’s civic society from within the civil service, Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament, local government, health and social care sector, broader public sector and their partners within the third sector.