Leeds City Council is piloting live chat for those looking for help on its website.

The new technology, supplied by LivePerson, helps recognise when a visitor to the council website looks like they may need help and connects them with a customer service representative.

The technology will also help the council get feedback from residents to help shape local services and make improvements to the website. It also acts as a warning system about technology glitches, such as when the systems used to pay for school meals went down.

Adam Quesne, head of digital access at Leeds City Council, said: ‘LivePerson’s Live Chat was introduced as part of LCC’s Customer Access Strategy, which seeks to treat citizens as customers whose feedback is used to shape and improve council services and communication.

‘It’s proved very popular so far and enables us to have conversations with members of the community we might otherwise find hard to reach.’

So far the council has conducted 25,000 ‘chats’ with customers and is now looking to extend the technology across more of its website pages.