Public facing Chatbot and Search Improvements

Overview The AI website assistant is a Microsoft Copilot Studio-based conversational agent deployed on scottishwater.co.uk, designed to help customers, businesses, developers and community groups find published information more quickly by answering questions in plain English, rather than requiring users to search the site manually.

How it is Used The system was introduced to reduce the time visitors spend searching for information — particularly during supply incidents when speed matters most — to extend availability beyond contact centre hours, and to free contact centre capacity to focus on account and incident calls that genuinely need a human. Before adopting Copilot Studio, Scottish Water considered retaining its existing search/FAQ experience and building a custom AI solution; both were assessed as less able to meet these aims within a reasonable timeframe (see Alternatives Considered).

Scope and Limitations Technically, the assistant is grounded only in content already published on scottishwater.co.uk, refreshed into the system on a scheduled basis, and does not train or ground on customer, employee or operational personal data. It uses a small number of Copilot Studio connectors/actions to retrieve and surface published or approved information, and is hosted within Scottish Water's Microsoft tenant (see System Architecture).

Human Oversight To ensure the system continues to function as intended, grounding content is refreshed on a schedule, conversations are reviewed periodically by the Digital Communications and Data Assurance Teams for quality, safety and factual accuracy, and any connectors/actions are re-tested when updated (see Maintenance). The assistant is assistive only: it does not make decisions about accounts, supply, billing or services, and a visible route to the Customer Contact Centre (0800 0778 778) is built into every conversation.