United KingdomPublic sector2020 – ongoingHM Revenue & Customs
Ask HMRC online digital assistant
HMRC's digital assistant recorded more than 5.48 million accesses in 2024
Problem
Taxpayers previously relied on telephone contact centres or written correspondence for help. The early pandemic created a need for an additional contact channel.
Approach
HMRC introduced a digital assistant using Microsoft's natural-language-understanding service, formerly supplied by Nuance. It matched questions to general answers and government guidance. Customers could escalate complex queries to human webchat advisers on supported services, carrying their conversation transcript across.
Results
Takeaway
The service handled general guidance while human advisers retained account-specific work. Access counts did not establish how many enquiries were resolved.
Categories
- Size
- Large enterprise
- Industry
- Public sector
- Business function
- Customer service
- Innovation type
- Process innovation
- AI technology
- Conversational and voice AI
- Adoption
- Partner co-development
- Evidence
- Company's own claim
Sources
Source summaries
HMRC described its natural-language assistant and human webchat escalation. It reported more than 5.48 million assistant accesses during calendar 2024.
Full details are in the original sources.