ep.68 Transforming Citizen Engagement: How AI-Powered Chat Is Revolutionizing Government Services with Bratton Riley, CEO of Citibot

Joe Toste [00:00:00]:
You're listening to the public sector show by Techtables, a podcast dedicated to sharing human centric stories from CIOs and technology leaders across cities, county, state and federal agencies. Joining in the conversation and touching the hearts and minds of leaders across technology today, from mission driven leadership to cloud AI to cybersecurity, workforce challenges, and more. Never miss insights from peers and vendor partners across the public sector. And to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Techtables.com and drive your email to subscribe. New podcast episodes come out every Tuesday and Thursday, along with weekly behind the Mic newsletter. And one of today's podcast sponsors is Techtables plus, an engaging new community where you can have early access to never before released episodes, early access to live event recordings, early access to weekly three interesting learnings, early access to live event ticket purchases, no episode ads and more, plus three extra special bonuses when you sign up today. Bonus number one, access to the CEO show bonus number two, access to the higher ed show and bonus number three, access to the digital show. Join Techtables plus today.

Joe Toste [00:01:02]:
As always, thank you for supporting the techtables network. All right, let's welcome up Bratton Riley.

Joe Toste [00:01:14]:
Co founder and CEO at Citybot. Welcome to Techtables.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:01:19]:
Thank you, my good man.

Joe Toste [00:01:20]:
I love it. Okay, so for those who are not familiar about Citibot, give us the pitch. Founder. Come on, founder, we'll do it.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:01:28]:
Citibot is an AI powered customer service chat solution for government customer service. We occupy multiple channels. We started with text messaging because we are big believers in digital equity and we have moved to a web chat and we're going into social media and soon to voice.

Joe Toste [00:01:47]:
Yeah, no, I love that. Okay, so you've got this really great story. So you've ever heard the phrase like pastor's kid, where kids are like pastor's kids? Well, this is a mayor's kid. Mayor's, mayor's kid.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:01:59]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:02:01]:
Your dad was like the mayor of Charleston for like 40 years, right?

Joe Toste [00:02:04]:
Something ridiculous.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:02:05]:
4000 years.

Joe Toste [00:02:06]:
4000 years. Yeah. So tell us about that. You're growing up.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:02:11]:
Growing up. I was the mayor's kid. So, Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston has a strong mayor, former government. So the mayor is the CEO of the city, and he built an inclusive government in the mid 70s in the deep south, which was not something you read about a white politician doing, and super proud of that hired an african american police chief in 1980, which you didn't hear about in the deep south at that time. And so Charleston has generally been a conservative city. It's now kind of purple, but he was always pushing the envelope. And so as a child, I was very proud of the work that the was doing.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:02:54]:
But also, you can't please everyone. So there were always people that were wanting him to move less fast. But anyways, so much has happened in Charleston during that time. And I literally grew up in city hall and have such an appreciation for how local government serves its residents and all the services that it provides to its residents. And I watched him build relationships of trust with residents over 40 years. And we've been through good times and bad times in Charleston, and when the bad times happen, it's really critical that the trust is there. And fortunately that was the case. And so really the question we wanted to solve for when we created citybot was, how can we help governments scale faster those relationships of trust? To help build the trust and confidence in the residents, the government's going to do what they ask it to do and do in a way that's more accessible, more in the hands of residents to get the information they need and get the job done that they're looking for.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:04:08]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:04:08]:
So I imagine as a mayor's kid growing up, you're probably like most kids where you're like 18, you're like, all right, I'm out of here.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:04:16]:
I looked like I was twelve.

Joe Toste [00:04:17]:
Yeah, you look like you're twelve. Voices still cracking. You're out the door right now. You're probably not thinking public sector, right?

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:04:29]:
It was funny when my dad asked me, like, where I want to go to college. I went to Uva in Charlottesville and I told him I wanted to get away because I wanted to get out of his sphere of influence. So I did that and then I moved to Brazil after I went to college. Let's go. And that was an amazing experience. But I've always been closely connected to government and politics and the issues around equity and taking care of all residents, regardless of what they're bringing to the table, is just embedded in my heart. So it goes back to the early age. So it's fun for us to now be able to deploy technology to try, know, realize that vision of really trying to help people out at.

Joe Toste [00:05:22]:
And is that what inspires you? Like, what inspires you to keep going?

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:05:28]:
Yeah, I mean, example is New Orleans is a customer of ours and we just launched with them in June. They call it jazz. So one of the things that we encourage our customers to do is to brand our system to the brand of the government. We believe that if the government, they only get so many bites at the apple of presenting themselves as a we love you resident organization. And so when you embed this cool aipowered chat system through the different communication channels, they're like, well, call it something. Know, don't need to call it Citybot. And so we got an email from New Orleans in January, and it said, we want to call the system jazz. And, I mean, y'all don't know me from Adam's house cat, but I got up and did my own version of a jazz dance, which fortunately was not on video because y'all would definitely have three cameras here.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:06:19]:
Maybe after a few drinks. That's a w later. Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:06:21]:
Oh.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:06:22]:
So anyway, so we launched in June, and then Ida, of course, hits New Orleans three weekends ago, and it was that Monday. And we're reaching out to the city to be like, how you doing? We've been in touch with them throughout the storm, and we're about to post something on our chat greeting where we're constantly keeping the residents updated as to what's going on, to say that if there's a down power line, please call 911. We get approval from our customer before we do that stuff. And they said, don't push that out. 911 is down. So this was right when the storm hit. So for a time, the phone system was down, and so they were really getting the message out to the residents saying, hey, if you have an emergency, you need to go to the nearest police station or go to the nearest fire station. It's just know that's when you feel the gut punch.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:07:15]:
But in answer of your question, what keeps us going is the greatest honor that we have as a company is being there for our customers when they need us the most. And that's what we helped our customer do in Ida. So we were constantly using our chat greeting as a messaging tool to tell people where you can get an oxygen tank, where you can go to a shelter that's got food and water and power. How can you get a free ride to the shelter? And keeping that continuously updated? It's like, those are the moments where it's just like, you hate that a community goes through that, but it's such an honor to be there. So that's what really keeps us going.

Joe Toste [00:07:56]:
Now you're doing work in Texas, right?

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:07:59]:
Yes.

Joe Toste [00:07:59]:
Now, what was the city? Because I started going on some Texas website because I was like, I'm going to test citybot out. I got to see this. So I'm going around and, man, what city?

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:08:09]:
Arlington, probably, or Brownsville.

Joe Toste [00:08:11]:
I think it was. Maybe it was Arlington. Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:08:13]:
I love that.

Joe Toste [00:08:14]:
So how do you think about automating these conversations between cities and citizens? Where do you see it work and where does it not work?

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:08:22]:
So if you want to stump a chat bot, you can always stump a chat bot. I did. We build a knowledge base for our customers. We usually use the web content that they have on their website. They work so hard to keep that data current and fresh, and it's a lot of information. They're publicly regulated. Everything needs to be public. So we use that information as the knowledge base, and then now we can actually bring into our system the questions that we anticipate residents will ask.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:08:50]:
And then we build in conversational AI the conversations around how residents can make a service request. In the case of local government, where there's a pothole, mist, trash pickup, et cetera. My recycling wasn't picked up. I just lost my dog, et cetera. We can build all that in conversational AI, and then we always have an out. So if you do stump the bot, there's always a chance for the resident to send in a personalized message using the words they want to use, and they get an immediate response saying, government's going to get back in touch with them. So you never get to that dead end. Like, no one wants to engage in chat and give them the dead end, and then you have to start over from scratch.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:09:28]:
You don't want that. And then with the way the technology is going with AI and machine learning, our ability to answer questions more accurately and using more data that extends beyond the government website is what we're beta testing right now. We're very excited about the results that we're seeing.

Joe Toste [00:09:50]:
Oh, that's great.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:09:51]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:09:51]:
So I was reading on the AWS machine learning blog how Citibot's chatbot search uses AI to find more answers. I'll link to that in the show notes when we actually release the episode. But tell us about tensor Iot and Amazon. Alex, how does this all happen for Citibot?

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:10:10]:
So, yes, we use a lot of AWS technology, and I'm so pleased that my buddy Tate Ewing, who works for AWS, is here with us today. And they're like a little family outside of our company, family for us. So it's not just their technology, but it's the people, and we love the people that we get to hang out with that work there. But it's a combination of using conversational AI software that AWS has, that we use, the machine learning software that AWS has, that we're currently using, and then some of the cloud based. You know, one of the things as a startup is learning how to navigate the mothership that is Amazon. And fortunately, I've got some great teammates that have helped us on that, but it's been a great adventure to try to figure out how to get to the right people so that we can push the envelope on the technologies that they have to say, hey, look, you all ought to consider making this advancement in your technology because here's why.

Joe Toste [00:11:20]:
Oh, that's really great. So we've got someone from Amazon here, right?

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:11:24]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:11:25]:
Okay. So they'll grab you. What's his name again?

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:11:27]:
Tate. Tate. Tate Ewing. Yeah. Maybe you can interview him.

Joe Toste [00:11:31]:
Yeah, Tate, you're going to come up next, Tate. It's really easy. I just ask open ended questions. It's not hard. How was your day? It was good.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:11:40]:
Cool.

Joe Toste [00:11:40]:
What does good mean? Good means it was sunny outside, so we'll do that. Okay, so tell us, give us. I really want to have Tate come up here. Tell us, what are two to three tips around citizen engagement that you've seen work really well?

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:11:54]:
Well, I've got tips, and then I've got sort of directional stuff where we want to take it. But some tips are, first of all, just kind of helping governments on the back end. So we run this data dashboard, so we track all the communications that are coming in, not from a big brother perspective, because we don't care who's communicating, but we want the government to figure out why. So some of the tips that we use when we build our dashboard is just like, hey, let's use this data from the real conversations to improve how we answer questions. But it also might be how you need to manage content. Maybe there's an issue popping up on the radar because we see it coming in through our communications that governments need to proactively get ahead of. So one of those tips is just like, we present the data to you, let's use it for what it is. And part of what we do with our customers is we have a regular cadence of communication with them, where we show them the dashboard and say, look what's going on here.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:12:58]:
And in the case of New Orleans, some of the stuff that's coming in is, like, pretty heart wrenching stuff. And they have a 301 in New Orleans, too. So they're using the data. But it's such an honor to see them take these heart wrenching conversations and really connect with these folks to help them out. So that's a big tip. And then we've heard it in the room today with Nadia and Mandy, it's just like we want to be part of that innovation equation where we've got these govtech leaders who, oh, by the way, happen to be women, which is so cool that we have that and appreciate you for highlighting that. But we want to be part of that sort of innovative culture of fail fast, learn from the mistakes, and get better. And we'd love to see a lot more of that.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:13:56]:
We'd love to bottle up the words that I've heard here today and share it with a lot of these other government leaders that we talked to.

Joe Toste [00:14:04]:
Yeah, I love that. All right, so you can catch Bratton at the w afterwards. Super excited to hang out. I'm glad you came in.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:14:12]:
Maybe I'll do a jazz, maybe. I don't know if you really want to see that, but.

Joe Toste [00:14:17]:
No, I do. I really do. All right. Thank you, Bratton.

Bratton Riley, Founder at Citibot [00:14:20]:
Thank you, man.

Joe Toste [00:14:21]:
You're listening to the public sector show by techtables, a podcast dedicated to sharing human centric stories from CIOs and technology leaders across cities, counties, state and federal agencies. Joining in the conversation and touching the hearts and minds of leaders across technology today, from mission driven leadership to cloud AI to cybersecurity, workforce challenges, and more. Never miss insights from peers and vendor partners across the public sector. And to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Techtables.com and drop your email to subscribe. New podcast episodes come out every Tuesday and Thursday, along with weekly behind the mic newsletter and one of today's podcast sponsors is Techtables plus, an engaging new community where you can have early access to never before released episodes, early access to live event recordings, early access to weekly three interesting learnings, early access to live event ticket purchases, no episode ads and more, plus three, extra special bonuses when you sign up today. Bonus number one, access to the CEO show bonus number two, access to the higher ed show and bonus number three, access to the digital show. Join techtables plus today. As always, thank you for supporting Techtables network.