Are you on the line? - The City of Bern chatbot will be happy to help.

Bern, the capital of Switzerland, is the country's largest center for public administration. A total of over 133,000 citizens live in the city of Bern. Because of its role model function, sustainable development is very important to the city. The city of Bern offers its residents many services, including the residents' service and services relating to the environment and nature.

Initial situation

Every year, the Residents' Service customer service department receives over 100,000 telephone inquiries. The waiting times for the citizens of Bern are sometimes correspondingly long. It is striking that many customer concerns are very similar and could be answered in a standardized way. 

In the course of digitalization, round-the-clock availability has generally become a new customer requirement. The Bern Residents' Service also wanted to meet this desire for accessibility outside office and counter opening hours without waiting times. Such continuous availability can be achieved by automating processes with the help of a digital assistant. The City of Bern therefore decided to introduce a chatbot that provides citizens with quick and uncomplicated support for simple questions at any time and makes it easier for them to access electronic services. At the same time, this significantly reduces unnecessary phone calls or email inquiries.

Use Case

The aim of the City of Bern is to use the chatbot to simplify navigation to information and forms for its website visitors so that they can resolve many simple issues independently at any time.

Although, in principle, all frequently requested information can be found on the website, customer service still received many inquiries by phone or email before the introduction of the bot. As many of these inquiries as possible should now be redirected directly to the digital chatbot channel and dealt with there.

In spring 2022, the City of Bern's Residents' Services, Migration and Aliens Police launched their chatbot. In an initial phase, the digital assistant will help with questions about Serafe invoices, certificates - for example the residence permit or home country ID card - and dog management.