New Orleans Taps Charleston’s Citibot to Enhance Resident Communication and Meet Increased Demand for Services

Press Release

Citibot, the leading provider of interactive chat solutions for local government, announced that the City of New Orleans launched “Jazz,” a communications platform powered by Citibot’s web and text chat solutions.

“Now more than ever, it is important that we continue to find ways to improve emergency and non-emergency response for the residents we serve,” said City of New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell. “This new function will allow us to provide accessible communication tools to our residents and better connect them to our reliable NOLA-311 team. This partnership gives us another opportunity to meet our people where they are.”

Shortly after the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, NOLA-311, New Orleans’ primary source of local government information and non-emergency services, experienced an unprecedented 350 percent surge in call volume.

NOLA-311 staff worked quickly to address the challenges presented by the sudden surge in call volume, and drove efforts to continue providing the level of service that was expected of them from residents and visitors alike. Adding to that, the local 9-1-1 system was experiencing a heavy influx of non-emergency calls, compounding the challenge.

“We quickly realized that we needed to diversify our communications platform and streamline the way we were delivering our services,” said Tyrell Morris, Executive Director of Orleans Parish Communication District. “With Citibot, we can leverage AI-powered technology to better serve residents, 24/7, further ensuring their requests are added to the system, easily and accurately.”

Residents, visitors, and businesses can ask questions, make service requests, search for information and receive an immediate response with Jazz. The web chat feature is accessible to desktop and mobile users at both nola311.org and opcdla.gov where visitors will find a chat icon in the bottom right section of their browser window. They can also choose to access the same information and services, and directly contact NOLA-311 staff by texting “Hello” to Jazz at 311YES (311937).

“We are proud to partner with OPCD and NOLA-311 during this unprecedented time to help them better meet their community’s needs while building a modern, sustainable customer service platform,” said Bratton Riley, Citibot founder and CEO. “Once again, New Orleans is demonstrating transformational and innovative leadership with residents at the heart of their work.”

Developed leveraging the latest AI-driven chatbot technology, machine learning and natural language processing, Citibot Web Chat can handle the day-to-day needs of governments and their residents, and has a specific capability to respond to COVID-19 questions and needs.

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.

For more information about Citibot Web Chat or to schedule a demo, visit www.citibot.io.

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