
Project time
Year
Problem
It’s a well-known pain point for engagement practitioners: processing large volumes of qualitative input from community members. This input, rich in detail and diversity, is crucial for informed decision-making, but the analysis poses significant hurdles. Due to the time it takes and its complexity, it is difficult to fully capture and leverage the wealth of information provided by residents. That’s also what Cambridge City Council experienced.
Esther Pickard, Digital and Web Product Manager advises teams who run consultations digitally and explains: “One of our key challenges has been effectively analyzing open-ended feedback from residents. Traditional methods were time-consuming and often led us to shy away from free-text questions in our surveys. This changed with our introduction to Go Vocal's AI assistant. What piqued our interest was its capability to analyse free-text responses and automatically summarize key trends and insights. This functionality looked like a potentially interesting improvement for us, and perfect to use in our Design Code consultation project.”
A Design Code is a set of guidelines that shape the physical development of an area, ensuring that new constructions harmonise with both the character of Cambridge and the aspirations of its community. Therefore, it’s crucial to involve residents in the creation process.
The first phase of this project was about understanding the community’s perceived needs. Using its Go Vocal online consultation and engagement platform, Cambridge invited its residents to share their insights through a survey and pinpoint specific locations on an interactive map with their comments or suggestions. Based on those results, the team formulated five principles for improved neighbourhood design.
Esther adds: “In the second phase, we invited our community to give feedback on those principles and whether they were in line with the earlier input through a follow-up survey. We learned about Go Vocal's AI analysis feature right before launching this survey, and thought it was a nice opportunity to test it.”
The AI feature’s impact was immediately evident. Instead of carefully having to go through each response in exported spreadsheets, Cambridge City Council’s consultation team distilled insights and generated a comprehensive report in just a few clicks.
Esther: “Manually analysing a large number of responses to free-text questions is important but time-consuming. We know from experience that going through close to 100 responses we got from the Design Code survey could easily consume an entire day.”
“Thanks to the AI assistant, we saved about 10 hours, or 50%, in the analysis phase. The tool’s efficiency in processing and summarising the community’s feedback on the five principles of the Design Code was particularly impressive. It didn’t miss any significant points from the responses we received. The team validated the AI-generated summaries by comparing them with the original responses, finding the tool’s accuracy remarkable.”
“These AI-generated summaries were a good base to develop the reports needed to share with the public and stakeholders. It made the creation of the reports a lot easier and enhanced the transparency and inclusivity of the decision-making process.”
“Thanks to the AI assistant, we saved about 10 hours, or 50%, in the analysis and production of summaries of the community feedback.” - Esther Pickard, Digital and Web Product Manager
Introducing new tools usually involves some challenges, but this wasn’t the case with Go Vocal's AI assistant. From the start, it proved to be easy to understand and user-friendly. Its intuitive design enabled everyone in the consultation process to adopt it without any difficulties.
Esther: “We took some time to explore the AI tool, getting to know its different features and how it works. After we felt comfortable with it, we showed it to our Design Code consultation team, who were very open to trying out AI in their project. After the meeting, they went away and tried it out for themselves. Everyone understood how to use it quite easily and found the tool very user-friendly.”
Looking ahead, the council is eagerly anticipating the use of the AI tool, and discovering more benefits, in future consultations.
Esther: “Given its proven effectiveness, we’re confident that it will continue to play a crucial role in our consultation processes.”
Curious to see Go Vocal's AI assistant in action and discover how it can enhance your consultation processes? Book your demo now!
After seven years of using the same systems, the London Borough of Southwark conducted a technical audit to see if their digital engagement was at the cutting edge. After a detailed procurement process, Go Vocal came out on top. With benefits like AI analysis, built-in reporting, and all the tools for the job in one place, the intuitive platform has improved their efficiency almost twofold.
When the London Borough of Lambeth reviewed its community engagement practices, they identified a critical challenge: fragmentation. Teams across the council were using multiple tools without a central system to coordinate efforts or share insights. After carefully evaluating their options, Lambeth switched to Go Vocal, a decision that has already proven beneficial for their small but dedicated team.
Newham recently evaluated their Community Assemblies initiative, now known as People Powered Places. This article outlines a summary of the report’s key insights and ideas for future improvement. Read on to kindle fresh ideas for invigorating engagement within your own community!