Engagement & communications
AI Assistant
Answers from your own content — honest about what it doesn't know.
A bilingual assistant that answers resident questions using only your government's own published content — your pages, notices, code, and FAQs. When it isn't sure, it says so and hands the conversation to a person instead of guessing.
The challenge
Half of city hall's phone traffic is the same twenty questions — trash day, office hours, how to pay a ticket — asked in two languages, at all hours. Generic chatbots make things worse: they invent answers, and an invented answer from a government is a real problem.
In practice
Trash day, at 9 p.m., in Spanish
At 9 p.m., a resident types into the city website, in Spanish: when is heavy trash pickup on my side of town? The assistant answers in Spanish, pulling from the city's own published collection schedule, and links the page it drew from so she can check the source herself.
Her next question is about a drainage dispute with a neighbor — not something a website can settle. The assistant says so plainly and opens a ticket for staff instead of improvising legal advice. The next morning, an employee picks up the conversation with her question and her language already in hand.
What it does
- 01
Answers in English and Spanish
Residents ask in either language and get a real answer back in the same one.
- 02
Grounded in your content only
Answers are retrieved from your government's own pages, notices, and documents — not the open internet.
- 03
Honest escalation to staff
When the assistant isn't confident, it says so and routes the question to a person. No invented answers.
- 04
Where residents already are
Available on your public website and in the resident portal — no separate app to find.
- 05
Optional staff-side assistant
The same grounded engine can help your own staff find policies and procedures faster.
How it works
It learns your content
The assistant indexes your published pages, notices, and documents — yours and nothing else.
Residents ask naturally
Plain questions, in English or Spanish, typed the way people actually talk.
It answers and cites
Each answer links back to the page it came from, so residents can verify the source.
People handle the rest
Anything uncertain or sensitive escalates to staff with the full conversation attached.
English and Spanish
Bilingual by design
The assistant converses in English and Spanish, drawing on your bilingual content in the language the resident is using. Escalations preserve the resident's language so staff respond in kind.
Premium AI add-on
CiVQ AI: this module is the engine
The assistant is CiVQ AI's centerpiece: a bilingual concierge that answers from your government's own published content — indexed with pgvector — and cites the page each answer came from. When it isn't confident, it escalates honestly to staff with the conversation attached, instead of guessing.
Get started
See CiVQ in your language.
Book a 30-minute walkthrough with our team in Rio Grande City. We'll tailor it to your city, county, or district.
Bilingual support included at every tier.