Government leaders think that the biggest issue they face when applying AI is technology selection. The larger challenge, though, is getting AI access to the right information. Specifically, accurate, comprehensive, documented information that AI can use to provide reliable answers to residents.
Otherwise, the agentic AI chatbot doesn’t know the answer the resident needs, and they get incomplete, old, wrong, or unhelpful information. They get frustrated. They call again. They lose trust. To put this another way, AI isn’t smarter than the information they have to work with.
What happens if the policies and procedures, service rules, eligibility requirements, and departmental knowledge are not in one central place in an accessible form? What if they’re locked up in people’s heads? Or stored on shared drives, email chains, or outdated documents.
For government contact centers and 311, the result is residents opting out of self-service, increased call volumes, more time spent correcting AI errors by customer service agents, and growing complaints.
Before putting your chatbot into service, agencies need to prepare first. Get your knowledge ready. Document, verify, and maintain every service, process, policy and workflow in one accessible central knowledge management system. Technology fuels the chatbot. Knowledge fuels the response.
Leadership takeaway
If the AI is serving up incomplete or incorrect responses, start by improving the underlying knowledge, not the chatbot itself.
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