Press Release
Citibot, a Charleston-based company that provides interactive chat solutions for local government, today announced a new fully integrated web chat product to help municipalities automate customer service for their website visitors.
Citibot Web Chat is a built in web assistant that integrates with municipal websites and interacts with visitors to make it easier for them to get quick answers to questions, make service requests, and directly contact staff. It is the only product designed for local government that fully integrates with their websites and back-end customer service systems, creating a turn-key user experience and enabling government to process communications and customer service more efficiently.
Developed leveraging the latest AI-driven chatbot technology, machine learning and natural language processing, Citibot Web Chat is able to handle the day-to-day needs of government and their residents and also has a specific capability to respond to COVID-19 questions and needs.
“Government websites are rich with content, which makes it hard for some residents to quickly find the information they need,” said Bratton Riley, CEO of Citibot. “We're excited to launch Citibot Web Chat to help provide a better web experience while improving efficiency and customer service. We can have an interactive chat on our favorite vendor's website as opposed to being on hold or waiting for an email response. Now we can do the same with our local government's website.”
Citibot's new Web Chat can answer COVID questions at the local level. “Residents can ask for local health updates as well as current social distancing guidelines,” Riley said. “They can easily know what our ‘new normal' might look like locally by just asking their question to Citibot. If they need additional help, then town, city or county staff can respond quickly.”
Citibot Web Chat complements its existing automated communication tools including Text Chat and Interactive Text Alerts initially developed in 2017 to facilitate ease of communication and make government accessible for all. Citibot is the only provider with complete integration features to provide full-resolution customer service chat solutions in the local government marketplace.
Municipalities around the country use Citibot to scale customer service, build rich data for real-time decision making, increase workforce productivity and save money.
The City of Williamsburg is among the first municipalities to implement Citibot Web Chat.
“I'm interested in any way we can better get information to or request information from citizens, and I firmly believe that leveraging artificial intelligence is going to be the answer,” said Mark Barham, City of Williamsburg's director of information technology. “With Citibot, we are able to help users search for information and report issues via text message—and now, with Web Chat, we look forward to extending that personalized level of service to our website.”
