ChesterBot - A Successful Collaboration of Communications and Technology

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2021

ChesterBot, of Chesterfield County, Virginia, is an automated question and answer-style chatbot designed to assist users of the county’s Chesterfield.gov and Library.Chesterfield.gov websites locate online resources across a variety of departments, resources and services.Recognizing the need to quickly access rapidly changing information at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, ChesterBot was created to assist many users in simultaneously obtaining accurate results 24/7. Automating this major communications effort early allowed the county’s personnel resources to be allocated to other COVID-19 priorities.In addition to its curated knowledge base, ChesterBot connects users to the entirety of our website’s content, including many of the county’s custom-built and third-party applications by using webhooks and application interfaces (APIs). Chesterfield County Public Library (CCPL) ChesterBot’s interface integrates directly to the library’s catalogue and includes a live chat with a librarian feature.ChesterBot has been specifically designed to maximize accessibility: the initialization code is optimized for screen readers, it is entirely tab-navigable, it utilizes ARIA attributes and the embedded interface is able to benefit from global web services such as Google Translate.Since activation, ChesterBot has received over 20,500 queries, 12,400 click-throughs and 1,500 live chats, assisting users in quickly navigating to needed information.