Bloomington developing 'chatbots' to answer residents' FAQs

Bloomington is developing a computer program that may soon make some of the frustrations that come with navigating city government a thing of the past.

Tom Miller, the city’s director of innovation, recently launched a test version of the city’s customer service chatbot. The chatbot is essentially an automated system in which residents can send text messages to receive pre-loaded answers to the city’s most frequently asked questions. About 10 individuals have signed up to be involved in the program’s limited beta test.

Anyone can interact with a simple version of the chatbot to provide feedback after visiting City Hall by texting the word “survey” to 812-558-5987.

“A lot of inspiration for this comes from finding people wandering the halls,” Miller said. “We just want to empower people.”

The survey chatbot allows visitors to evaluate their experience at City Hall. After texting “survey” to the number, a user is given the opportunity to rank their experience and identify which city employees they met. It’s a rudimentary system with a limited number of computer-generated responses, but Miller and a team out of the mayor’s office plan to repurpose the framework as a customer service opportunity.

“We just wanted to build a minimum viable product as an example,” he said. “It’s not a revolutionary concept, but when we look at how we talk to government, it could change everything.”