Bath & North East Somerset Council
Case study
Bath & North East Somerset explained
Bath & North East Somerset Council needed to modernise the way it communicated with residents. Handling more than 50,000 calls each month alongside thousands of emails, webchats, SMS, WhatsApp and social media messages, the Council was constrained by fragmented legacy systems that made it hard to deliver fast, consistent and accessible support.
The ambition was much bigger than a telephony upgrade. B&NES Council wanted a modern, resident-first contact centre platform that could support omnichannel engagement, improve operational flexibility, unlock AI capability and help deliver its core mission of improving people’s lives.
The business challenge
B&NES Council’s existing telecommunications platform was no longer fit for the needs of a modern council serving 200,000 residents. It was difficult to adapt during incidents, reporting took days, payment workflows were manual and time-consuming, and there were no integrated chat, social, web or AI capabilities.
The impact was felt by both residents and staff. Residents did not have a consistent experience across channels, while employees had to work across multiple disconnected systems. Even simple changes often required external support, limiting agility and slowing service improvement.
The Council also wanted to avoid forcing residents into a single route for support. Instead, it needed an inclusive, future-ready platform that could support phone, email, web chat, SMS, WhatsApp, social media and British Sign Language, while giving teams better visibility, reporting and workflow control.
"We didn’t want to prescribe the communication channel our residents would use."
The Charterhouse solution
B&NES Council engaged independent technology consultancy 4C to help evaluate the market and shape the strategy. This process showed how far cloud communications platforms had evolved beyond traditional telephony, helping the Council define a much broader customer experience transformation programme.
The procurement process was built around user experience rather than technical specifications alone. Stakeholders from across the Council, including service teams, operational staff, end users and customer service teams, were involved from the outset. In total, 25 people helped evaluate responses, with scoring focused heavily on the resident, agent, supervisor and user experience.
B&NES Council selected Zoom as its platform, with Charterhouse Group as the implementation and partner layer. The Council wanted a long-term transformation partner, not just a supplier, and felt Charterhouse brought the collaborative mindset, expertise and commitment needed to support adoption, continual improvement and future roadmap development.
"Charterhouse were genuinely interested in making a success with us rather than just providing a service."
The transformation
B&NES Council’s existing telecommunications platform was no longer fit for the needs of a modern council serving 200,000 residents. It was difficult to adapt during incidents, reporting took days, payment workflows were manual and time-consuming, and there were no integrated chat, social, web or AI capabilities.
The impact was felt by both residents and staff. Residents did not have a consistent experience across channels, while employees had to work across multiple disconnected systems. Even simple changes often required external support, limiting agility and slowing service improvement.
The Council also wanted to avoid forcing residents into a single route for support. Instead, it needed an inclusive, future-ready platform that could support phone, email, web chat, SMS, WhatsApp, social media and British Sign Language, while giving teams better visibility, reporting and workflow control.
"The Zoom platform, along with the initial guidance from Charterhouse, means we can rollout more features such as AI Web Bots quickly."
The outcomes
B&NES Council is now meeting the requirements of its Customer Experience Framework and BEST values through the implementation of the new platform.
The contact centre has scaled significantly, growing from 200 agents to more than 450 in less than a year as more services adopt the platform. It is now live across webchat, SMS, social, WhatsApp, email and voice, giving residents more choice while improving internal visibility and service consistency.
AI is also helping reduce manual workload and improve confidence among staff. Agents are supported by tools including sentiment analysis, call summaries, coaching prompts and an AI-powered knowledge base, helping them respond more consistently and reducing reliance on supervisors or manual searches.
For Waste Services, Zoom’s virtual agent was launched in December and resolved more than 80% of resident queries in its first weeks, reducing the need for staff intervention and freeing the team to focus on more complex cases.
Managers now have real-time visibility of workloads and can dynamically allocate resources, balance channels and respond more quickly to changing demand. AI-generated call summaries, automated actions and improved reporting also mean teams spend less time on manual administration and more time supporting residents.
Reporting has improved dramatically. Processes that previously took days are now supported by Zoom’s reporting functionality, replacing manual spreadsheet work and giving teams better insight into call volumes, themes and actions. The PCI payment process has also been simplified through direct integration with the Council’s income system.
What's next for Bath & North East Somerset
The project is now part of B&NES Council’s ongoing improvement plan. In 2026, the Council plans to continue rolling out Zoom AI tools across public-facing departments and further develop a fully integrated multichannel experience. Future updates will track measures such as handling time, escalation rates and customer satisfaction, while expanding support for channels including SMS, WhatsApp and API connections to business systems.
This transformation is making it easier for residents to engage with the Council, while improving accessibility, streamlining communications and giving teams the tools to deliver more flexible, efficient and responsive services.
The PDF
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