Chatbot Resolves Many Resident Inquiries
With the volume of questions it fields, Monty’s productivity is the equivalent to a 12-hour shift for one 311 customer service representative, Zanfardino said.
To date, the chatbot has about a 50% approval rating from residents, he added.
“We take all of that feedback, and we are analyzing it every single day to try to gain insights to improve the performance of the chatbot and grow out its functionality,” he said.
For the month of March 2023, Monty 1.0 fielded 848 inquiries and failed to answer 41% of inquiries, Montgomery County officials said. But in March 2025, Monty 2.0 improved on that rate. It fielded 1,868 inquiries and left only 12% of them unanswered. Only 11% of Monty 2.0 responses ask users must call 311 to resolve their answers.
“We were able to help our residents find information specific to their address. They would punch in their ZIP code or their address, and they can go find where they could drop off their ballots for the election or ... when their leaves would be collected by the county,” Zanfardino said. “We keep getting different requests from our departments that we’re vetting and growing out the product further.”
Montgomery County Change Management Manager Skyler Grubbs said, “Data-centric feedback is important not only for making decisions but also prioritizing those decisions.”
While AI solutions are not perfect, their operators and AI agents can learn quickly and build trust over time, she said.
READ MORE: Scalable chatbots facilitate fast customer service.
Chatbot Experience To Guide Other Product Implementations
Montgomery County’s change management team administered the project not because they were knowledgeable AI experts but because they understood how to introduce new technology to government operations, Taqi said.
“We found that change management was so important from the product perspective and thinking through user scenarios. We didn’t hire any consultants for this project,” she said. “Microsoft was a great partner in it as well and to this day still sits on some weekly calls with us.”
Grubbs said the county is looking at replicating Monty’s functionality in other lines of business, such as a chatbot serving government employees.
“Because product demands are increasing, we’re preparing to mature our product delivery model from beginning to end,” Grubbs said. “We’re formalizing a strategy, an innovation team and a product team dedicated to continuous AI solutions evaluation and delivery.
The change management team is also working with the county CIO to plan for support to any changes in the government IT environment.
