SUCCESS STORY / MANCHESTER CITY COUNCIL
Transforming Revenues & Benefits Email Automation with AI
Manchester City Council is using AI-powered email automation to read, understand and categorise incoming emails, using sentiment analysis to reduce manual processing and improve service delivery.
KEY OBJECTIVES & OUTCOMES
1.
62% enquiries automatically categorised and prioritised
2.
18% landlord change of tenancy emails fully automated without officer intervention
3.
1.3 FTE equivalent saved from inbox administration and Revenues processing
4.
20% emails auto responded to as not sufficient info for processing
Brief
Manchester City Council's Revenues & Benefits service receives more than 3,000 emails every month from residents, businesses, landlords, agents and other stakeholders. These enquiries cover a wide range of topics, including account queries, requests for information, changes in circumstances and general service issues.
Because emails are often unstructured, each one had to be reviewed manually to decide what happens next. Messages then had to be indexed and uploaded to the council's document management system (DMS) for processing. This took up valuable officer time and added a significant administrative burden.
Email is still an important customer contact channel, so it couldn't simply be removed. Although the council encouraged customers to use online forms, many enquiries continued to arrive by email. Closing the inboxes would have reduced customer choice, lowered efficiency and increased pressure on higher-cost channels such as the contact centre.
Manchester City Council needed a way to manage rising email volumes without relying on officers to read, classify and route every message manually.
About Manchester City Council
- Services 580,000 residents
- 225,220 council tax properties
- Over 100,000 university students
- Diverse population speaking around 200 languages
Inbox Assistant has initially been implemented in just one inbox, but its success clearly demonstrates the wider potential. We're now looking to expand this across additional high-volume Revenues and Benefits correspondence channels to drive greater efficiency and enhance service delivery.
John Bailey, Business Analyst – Systems and Subsidy Team
Solution
Manchester City Council partnered with Govtech to implement Inbox Assistant, combining webCAPTURE digital process automation with Liberty IDP (intelligent document processing).
The council's previous solution depended heavily on customers providing a valid account reference number (ARN). If that information was missing or incorrect, emails had to be handled manually, which limited automation and caused delays.
Manchester needed a smarter solution that could understand the content of emails and attachments, identify the information needed for processing, and determine the right next step, whether an ARN was provided or not.
The objectives were to:
- Increase automatic indexing rates
- Reduce reliance on ARNs
- Identify customers using alternative information, such as addresses and personal details
- Analyse email content to determine the nature of the enquiry
- Automatically categorise correspondence into the correct document and work types
- Improve workload prioritisation
- Support greater end-to-end email automation across existing workflows.
Inbox Assistant reads incoming correspondence, understands the content, extracts the relevant information and automatically directs each email to the right outcome. A tenancy change can be processed automatically, while a general enquiry can be categorised and routed to the right team. Emails that need further action can be prepared for intelligent document processing with less manual intervention.
Inbox Assistant has transformed the way we manage incoming emails, significantly reducing admin effort and delivering measurable efficiencies. As a result, our teams focus on providing exceptional customer service and supporting higher-value customer activities.
Samantha Sauco, Senior Systems & Subsidy Manager
Results
3,218 emails triaged
100% automated handling
Immediate results
measurable from the first month of the deployment
1.3 FTE
equivalent saved from inbox administration and Revenues processing
20% instant responses
653 emails were provided instant, automated responses
62% priortised
1,997 emails automatically categorised and prioritised
18% fully automated
568 landlord tenancy change cases were automatically processed and completed without officer intervention
Future potential
to automate more of the work traditionally associated with incoming email
Success factors
Email automation for efficiency savings
By understanding the content of each enquiry instead of relying only on reference numbers, Inbox Assistant delivers higher levels of email automation, reduces manual intervention and saves the equivalent of 1.3 FTE across inbox administration and Revenues processing.
Automated email and document processing significantly reduces manual administration, giving officers more time to focus on supporting customers instead of co-ordinating correspondence.
AI-powered insight
AI analyses email content and sentiment to improve routing decisions and workload management. This helps teams identify and fast-track urgent enquiries, so responses are quicker and more consistent.
Irrelevant enquiries, or those with missing key information, can be identified automatically and responded to early, helping prevent unnecessary work.
Maintained customer choice
Residents can continue to use email as a contact channel without adding pressure to contact centre resources.
Supporting Manchester’s intelligent document processing
The initial deployment focused on a single high-volume Revenues & Benefits inbox, but the results show strong potential to expand further. It demonstrates how AI can be applied to a practical, high-volume service challenge, reducing repetitive tasks so people can focus on more important work.
Every digital transformation success stories starts somewhere.
Whatever your starting point, get in touch. Our team will arrange an informal conversation to understand what you want to improve and why, explore how digital process automation could help, and, if needed, support you in building a business case around those goals.