If you live in South Ayrshire and you need help with something, the information you need almost certainly already exists.
Voluntary Action South Ayrshire have spent years building Connect South Ayrshire into a genuinely comprehensive local directory: community groups, support services, volunteering opportunities, activities and events, all of it gathered, checked and kept current by their team.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Anyone can list services. Keeping a directory accurate, across an entire local authority area, year after year, is slow and unglamorous work. It is the difference between a phone number that connects you to someone who can help and one that rings out.
The problem was never the information
A directory only helps if you already know what you are looking for, and how somebody else has decided to file it.
Someone worried about paying for their heating this month does not necessarily know whether that sits under money advice, housing, or energy. A parent looking for something for their child to do in the holidays has to guess whether that is listed under activities, events, or families. Someone new to the area, or not confident with English, or finding a screen hard work, may not get as far as guessing.
The information was there. Reaching it took knowing the map.
Ask Connect
Ask Connect is an assistant that sits on the Connect South Ayrshire website. It went live in August 2026.
People can tap a tile for the things they are most likely to need, volunteering, public services, support services, what is on, having their say, or getting in touch. Or they can simply ask a question in their own words, the way they would ask a person behind a desk. Where is my nearest food bank. What is on for kids this weekend. How do I volunteer.
What it tells them comes from Connect's own listings. It is not searching the wider internet and it is not inventing answers. When it points somebody towards a service, that is a service Connect's team have gathered and checked, and the assistant hands over the real contact details so the person can take it from there.
Events and activities come from the same place, so somebody can find out what is actually happening near them this week rather than reading a page that was accurate last spring.
In their own words
We commissioned the development of the Ask Connect chatbot from Thinking ForWord Social to give our website users a more streamlined experience when searching our site for information. With over a thousand activities listed, hundreds of current events and support services, as well as listings for public services, the Ask Connect chatbot brings together multiple results in one place for the end user.
Working with Colin from Thinking ForWord Social in the development of our bespoke chatbot was seamless and thorough, with the journey from initial discussions through to going live very timely, meaning we did not have to utilise a huge amount of resource during the journey.
Made to be easier to use, not cleverer
Several of the choices in the build were about reaching people that a conventional website tends to lose.
It works in over 40 languages. It will read its answers aloud, so somebody can listen rather than read. People can speak their question instead of typing it. None of that is decoration: South Ayrshire has residents whose first language is not English, residents who find reading difficult, and residents who simply get on better with a screen when they are not obliged to type into it.
The assistant does not try to be clever with them. Certain things, a person in crisis, somebody at risk at home, a worry about a child, are handled by fixed rules rather than left to a generated answer. In those moments it gives the recognised helpline, immediately, the same way every time. That was deliberate, and it is not negotiable.
Getting it live
The Connect website is a bespoke build rather than an off-the-shelf platform, which usually makes adding anything to a site more involved. In this case it was not. Because their site uses shared page templates, the assistant went on with a single line of code and appeared across the whole site immediately. Their developer had it in place in minutes.
It is free for anybody to use, and there is nothing to download or sign up for.
In short
- An assistant on the Connect South Ayrshire website, live since August 2026
- Answers come from Connect's own listings, gathered and checked by their team
- Tap a tile, or ask a question in your own words
- Over 40 languages, answers read aloud, and voice input
- Fixed, immediate signposting when somebody is in difficulty
- Free to use at connectsouthayrshire.org
What we hope it does
None of this replaces the work that makes Connect worth using. The directory is still the product of people who know the area and take the trouble to keep it right. The assistant is a door into it, not a substitute for it.
If it means somebody finds the service they need at nine o'clock at night, in the language they think in, without having to work out how a website has been organised first, it has done its job.
Could this work for your organisation?
If you run a directory, a service, or a website people struggle to navigate, I would be glad to talk it through.
Book a 15-Min Call See Ask Connect live
Ask Connect was built for Voluntary Action South Ayrshire by Thinking ForWord Social CIC, a community interest company based in Ayr, building AI tools for organisations doing good work in Scotland.
AI for Good. Built for Everyone. · thinkingforwordsocial.com