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Mataró City Council has launched a conversational virtual assistant (chatbot) which is available through WhatsApp, Telegram and the website. This service improves the efficiency, effectiveness and quality of care for citizens, that you can communicate with the town hall at any time through the channel that is most convenient for you, quickly and easily.
The increase in the use of electronic processing has highlighted the problems many people have in understanding and using digital services. As a result, traditional public service channels such as offices, telephone and e-mail are often overwhelmed.
The chatbot automates responses to repetitive queries about council services and procedures, allowing municipal staff to focus on more complex queries and value-added tasks.
This best practice is published inDigiCanvis Observatory.
How does the service work?
Once the person accesses the chatbot, the operation is as follows:
- The chatbot welcomes you and asks for consent to the data protection regulations, as well as language selection.
- The chatbot then displays a menu with different options to help citizens solve their query in a guided way. As the person chooses an option, they advance in the depth level of the menu until they find the information they need.
- In addition, at any time, the person can make a query via text message. The chatbot interprets the query and provides a response based on the intentions with which it has been trained. If the chatbot does not understand the question, it requests the use of short phrases or keywords, or offers to contact other citizen assistance services.
- In either case, the chatbot presents the information that resolves the query as static content or as a link to the corresponding procedure or content.
The chatbot also allows functionality to be incorporated to offer better municipal services. The Mataró City Council has enabled the possibility to consult the Mataró Bus waiting time, information on the electoral roll and whether you are a member of an electoral board.
What benefits does it bring?
- Improves the quality of public services. The chatbot is available 24×7 on the municipal website, the electronic Headquarters, Telegram and WhatsApp, improving convenience and access to digital services.
- Improves user experience. The chatbot's immediate responses speed up the resolution of queries and doubts. In addition, the administration becomes closer, since citizens can relate through the same channels that they use in the personal sphere.
- It encourages personalized services. The evolution of the chatbot in the WhatsApp environment will make it possible to offer proactive and personalized services, since it can recommend specific content based on data provided by the person and preset responses to certain profiles.
The service has been in operation at Mataró Town Hall since June 2021. During the first four months of 2023, 6.500 inquiries were made through the chatbot, the same number as in all of 2022.
You can find out the key aspects to take into account to replicate this initiative in the file Omnichannel chatbot for citizen assistance.
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