Suffolk Police has successfully piloted a new live chat support system to safely communicate with victims of domestic abuse.

The service makes use of multiple safety functions, such as a quick exit button which diverts to the BBC and leaves no trace of the interaction in the browser history.

Between April and June 2020, there was a 65% increase in calls to the National Domestic Abuse Helpline, compared to the first three months of that year.

This prompted Suffolk Police and Futr, the AI driven Chat-as-a-Service provider, to run a pilot live chat solution, before expanding the programme to run a one-month dedicated domestic violence pilot scheme.

%image(14469791, type="article-full", alt="The system leaves no trace of the interaction in the browser history")

During that time, 72.5% of interactions were with new users and 27.5% were returning users.

The average conversation length was 40 minutes.

Rob Jones, assistant chief constable at Suffolk Police, said: "UK police forces receive over 100 calls every hour regarding domestic abuse. This is only the tip of the iceberg as it is estimated that just 18% of all victims report domestic abuse to the authorities.

"A lot of people, especially when anxious or scared, don't want to speak on the telephone - often in a language that isn't their first language - to someone they don't know. Our live chat pilot has instant language translation which enables us to explain people's options better in their first language.

"Live chat is about helping people and victims in terms of emotional engagement. It isn't just about freeing up expertise to be able to concentrate on other things. It's also providing experts with a different channel to provide their service really well."

%image(14469553, type="article-full", alt="Rob Jones, assistant chief constable at Suffolk Police, said: "Live chat is about helping people and victims in terms of emotional engagement"")

Suffolk Police have noted that live chat interactions helped make assessments using the DASH (Domestic Abuse, Stalking, Harassment and Honour-based violence) risk assessment easier.

Users were also more likely to share more in-depth information and present it in a more coherent way than when speaking over the phone or face to face to an officer.

The live chat log also provided a permanent record of interactions which could be attached to a crime report, providing higher quality information than an officers notes.

Andy Wilkins, CEO of Futr, said: "We are very proud to have partnered with Suffolk Police on this important pilot and look forward to implementing a permanent live chat support service for domestic abuse victims in the coming months."