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January 21, 2022

Government Customer Service & Digital Equity with Bratton Riley

Being the son of a mayor, Bratton Riley grew up around the government scene. Watching his father help build up his community in Charleston, NC, Bratton saw the importance of equity and technology in order to strengthen the connection between local government and its citizens. Fast forward to the present, he is now the CEO of Citibot, a customer service and data management software company providing solutions for cities, governments, and corporate clients. Tune in as Bratton shares stories of digital resilience in the face of natural disasters and the pandemic. He also shares about his support for his community and how that fuels his day to day WHY.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;22;20

Narrator

We're in an era of rapid change where resilience is vital. The Davood for Thought podcast dives into the most important topics in government and technology today. Our host, Davood Ghods, sits down with his vast network of colleagues to dish on the tech challenges that affect us all. Follow this podcast on your favorite platform and join the conversation by sharing it on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

 

00;00;22;23 - 00;00;49;09

Davood Ghods

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Direct Technologies, the Davood for Thought Podcast. I'm Davood Ghods and I will be your host today. The way I stay up with the pressing topics of tech and the government of today is to tap into the panel of experts I've had the honor of connecting with over the years. Today we have Brantton Riley on the podcast.

 

00;00;49;11 - 00;01;31;16

Davood Ghods

He is the founder and CEO of City Bot, a leading provider of AI powered chat bot solutions for citizens and their governments. Before founding City Board in 2016, Bratton led development and legal practices for Maybank Industries for almost 12 years, and prior to that he worked in government for the Supreme Court of South Carolina. Bratton received a degree in history from the University of Virginia, as well as a JD and MBA in international business from the University of South Carolina.

 

00;01;31;18 - 00;01;56;22

Davood Ghods

Bratton has also served on nonprofit boards in the areas of education, the arts and public health. And. Bratton I'm happy to welcome you to this episode of our podcast and would like to learn more about your experience in both public and private sectors. For someone who doesn't know about your area of expertise, please tell us more about yourself, the City Board, and who are some of your current clients? Welcome.

 

00;01;56;24 - 00;02;32;07

Bratton Riley

Davood, Thank you so much. It's great to be here with you today and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about the work that we're doing. So currently, City Board is a citizen engagement and customer service system for government customer service using a AI powered chat through a variety of communication channels like text messaging and web chat for the government website.

 

00;02;32;09 - 00;03;05;14

Bratton Riley

And we're about to bring on social media chat through Facebook Messenger and Twitter. We're driven by our mission, Davood, which is we want all residents, regardless of how much money they make, what their skin color looks like, or what language they speak to have equal access to a quality government engagement and customer service experience. That mission is very much influenced by my life experience of being the son of a mayor.

 

00;03;05;16 - 00;03;47;00

Bratton Riley

Mayor Joe Riley, who is the mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, where I am located now for 40 years. He was elected late in 75 and retired early in 2016, reelected nine times and is a strong mayor form of government here in Charleston. Davood meaning that the mayor is not more of a figurehead position and another council representative as exists in most cities around the US, but rather the mayor in Charleston is the CEO and drives all aspects of the business and vision of the city.

 

00;03;47;00 - 00;04;24;13

Bratton Riley

So my life experience was growing up in City Hall neighborhood and really becoming ensconced in not only the operations of local government, but really the opportunity of relationship and trust building that local governments have the opportunity, the great privilege to have with all of their residents. And I watched a transformative leader who is my dad lead the city of Charleston from kind of a rundown Navy town back in the seventies.

 

00;04;24;13 - 00;04;58;00

Bratton Riley

That was so full of racial tension and he built an inclusive government from the ground up in 75, which is why he was encouraged to run back then. And that helped set the stage for some of the transformative work that he and his team were able to do to build the city that it is today. And of course, that doesn't mean there is no longer any racial tension or anything like that, but a lot of progress was made and I got to be the witness of all of that.

 

00;04;58;00 - 00;05;32;09

Bratton Riley

And when we started sitting by the hypothesis, Davood was, can we use technology to help governments in the business of trust building at scale? And that's what we set out to do. And we've been so fortunate to work with cities like New Orleans and Fort Worth, Texas, and Arlington, Texas, and smaller cities like Citrus Heights, California, and Fairfield, California, and in cities and counties across the country.

 

00;05;32;12 - 00;06;00;19

Bratton Riley  

And we're just starting to work with some state agencies as well. It's been a a fun ride trying to figure out how to use AI technology to create these better experiences for residents to get what they need faster. They don't have to get caught up in a the vortex of the emails that might not get responded to or the calls, etc. and can get what they need fast and help them.

 

00;06;00;21 - 00;06;36;14

Bratton Riley

You know, we all have increasing lack of patience. For better or for worse, with all the customer service experiences that we want to have, and we're helping governments deliver on providing those better, more efficient, respectful experiences through our platform.  

 

00;06;36;14 - 00;07;06;27

Davood Ghods

Thank you. Not only you have experience working for government, you've lived government. It sounds like having a mayor as a father and the day to day life of a mayor. So you know the ins and outs of at least local government, you know, having worked with lots of public sector entities, what emerging trends are you seeing in the city and business fields that we should all be paying more attention to these days?  

 

00;07;07;02 - 00;07;38;00

Bratton Riley

Well, I think, you know, the most glaringly obvious outcome that we're seeing with the pandemic is the increase in government adoption of innovative technology. The governments can, uh, in an agile way, bring in new technology to help apply it to a need that's out there. And I think governments, many of them, realized how important communications and engagement has been through this experience that we've all been through over the last two and three quarter or one and three quarter year, 18, 20 months now.

 

00;07;38;03 - 00;08;16;23

Bratton Riley

And so we've seen some embracing of the new technologies faster. I think some governments and we salute them, are really focusing on what is the user journey in connecting with us and what should it be. A lot of these decisions previously were made internally by different siloed departments in government without necessarily taking into consideration. But what is what is the resident's experience?

 

00;08;16;23 - 00;09;13;00

Bratton Riley

What should it be? And we're starting to see some governments embrace that. And we're seeing, you know, when I started this company five years ago, Davood, for the first few years, my sales presentations were more of an educational session, so to speak, which isn't a great sales methodology, where I was explaining to governments that this technology exists, that you can have an air powered chat experience through multiple channels like text and web chat, and now we see governments are more comfortable and as we have more and better online chat experiences with commercial entities that we deal with, we're starting to see more appetite for the technology, specifically.

 

00;09;13;00 - 00;09;35;26

Bratton Riley

That's absolutely true. A lot of things that would have taken many more years of debate were embraced because of what we have gone through in the last few months or a year. And a half, two years. Absolutely. And then just to add to that sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. You just, you know, there the money's there, you know, so you might have the best day on the planet.

 

00;09;35;26 - 00;10;09;07

Bratton Riley

But if you can't fund it, you can't fund it. And with some of the federal government stimulus and now even perhaps the infrastructure bill, we will see, you know, faster procurements of technology because the you know, the dollars, are there more now than they were in the past. Right. Right. And the citizen or customers experience is a great angle that everyone is looking at to say, okay, what do the people want and what should it be, as you mentioned?

 

00;10;09;09 - 00;10;35;10

Davood Ghods

Absolutely. I think you would agree that adjusting to the pandemic was challenging for many organizations, and now everyone is thinking what the next major disruption like the pandemic is going to be and how can we better be prepared for it? So resiliency is a big topic of conversation these days. We offer a service called Resilience as a service of direct technology. What are some examples of resilience you've seen in the past year, year and a half? And what is the one thing organizations should be doing to improve resilience?

 

00;10;35;12 - 00;11;13;19

Bratton Riley

Well, it's a great and important question. I think, you know, the pandemic is, you know, the overwhelming example of the existential force of resiliency that we've seen. But as we look at communities more in a more targeted way, they go through they've gone through experiences, even in the last year.

 

00;11;13;19 - 00;11;42;22

Bratton Riley

And, you know, the greatest privilege we have as a company, Davood, is to be there for our government customers when they really need us, when something happens. So, for example, when the Texas snowpocalypse happened in February of 21 and the power grid went out. Mm hmm. You know, that's an example of, you know, of course, you had the folks that said I told you so.

 

00;11;42;22 - 00;12;14;29

Bratton Riley

There's all you know, you always have that those folks that said, oh, I knew this is going to happen. But the reality is it's hard for anyone to imagine how challenging that would be. But it's nothing like actually going through it to know that it's obviously a real thing. And I think for us in resiliency, it's how do we help governments handle circumstances that they aren't necessarily staffed or directed to handle.

 

00;12;15;00 - 00;12;47;23

Bratton Riley

For example, with the Texas Snowpocalypse, residents were reaching out to their local governments to wonder when their power was going to be turned on and when they could drink the water or shower with the water or fire and drinkable water in their communities. And in these moments, give some, you know, sense of understanding of what the real important things are like.

 

00;12;48;00 - 00;13;31;02

Bratton Riley

You know, it's cold out. I need heat and I'm thirsty. I need to drink water. And so governments then step into that role to help the people. And we helped it. We helped through our chat system to help, you know, give comfort to the residents that were asking those questions. Likewise, we helped Brownsville, Texas, in 24 hours launch a vaccination clinic, which was, you know, these are these are work initiatives, again, that local government isn't generally tasked to do, but they step up and we want to help them do that.

 

00;13;31;02 - 00;13;53;22

Bratton Riley

So we helped them were pushing out text messages to all the senior citizens that signed up for the vaccination clinic on a Thursday so they can show up on a Friday. And then 2000 senior citizens were vaccinated. And then finally, Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans, which is a customer of ours. And for a time period, the 911 system.

 

00;13;53;22 - 00;14;22;05

Bratton Riley

And through one system, Davood went down. You know, we did not. And so we were then we transformed ourselves into an emergency communications platform to help the people. So the point about resiliency is, I think when you are governments and something happens, what can you do with your existing partners, your existing vendors and your existing people to manage the situation as they come up?

 

00;14;22;05 - 00;14;50;03

Bratton Riley

And then also, what can we learn from Texas? What can we learn from the Brownsville Vaccination Clinic and what can we learn from the New Orleans experience in our own communities as teaching points to become more resilient in the other communities around the country? Absolutely. Lessons learned are very important from every experience. Besides power outage. There could be technological outages.

 

00;14;50;05 - 00;15;29;10

Bratton Riley

There could be a regional or nationwide or international virus hit. There could be civil unrest as we experienced last January. So those are all areas that we need to be resilient and be able to get back up after such a incident, such a disruption.  

 

00;15;29;13 - 00;16;06;16

Davood Ghods

Absolutely. Thank you. One of the things we do, a direct technology when we take on a project, we always talk about how we are going to do a project, but we also ask why we are doing what we are doing. What is your why? In other words, what motivates you in your work?  

 

00;16;06;17 - 00;16;30;29

Bratton Riley

It is equity and you know, digital equity is a talking point that we hear a lot about and generally that then turns into a conversation around broadband access to, you know, all the poor areas and in and around the country. If we're talking about the United States, we try to bring digital equity into the opportunity of engagement with government. You might have the best broadband access in the world, but how what is that open door that government provides for the people? And so that's really where our mission is. We want all residents, regardless of how much money they make, what color of their skin is, and what language they speak to have equal access to government and a positive customer service experience.

 

00;16;30;29 - 00;17;07;03

Bratton Riley

And so that's our mission. So we work every day on our mission, and that's why we and we do that through connecting to a variety of communication channels that are the preference channel preference for folks in the community. That's why we started with text messaging first. Davood Because 97% of adults in the US text. So let's go to the, the digital channels that are open to all and read regularly used by all.

 

00;17;07;06 - 00;17;32;04

Bratton Riley

So that's one way. And then how do we use AI to, you know, improve the experience itself? It's like, you know, how do we take one little customer service experience that a resident might be having for the first time with our government and turn that into a relationship of trust. So those are the things that drive us and you know, it.

 

00;17;32;06 - 00;18;01;08

Bratton Riley

You know, I'm not saying this because I read it in a book, but I'm saying this because of my life experience in seeing how my father built bridges to all aspects of the community here in Charleston to help the residents of Charleston, regardless of how much money they made or what color of their skin looked like or what language they spoke to, feel like the city government really cared about each one of them.

 

00;18;01;11 - 00;18;26;22

Bratton Riley

So that's really what drives us. And it's our team and the people that we want to hire. You know, we want to find folks that are moved by our mission. And it's not hard to find those folks as you can imagine. Right? Right. That's great. I'm glad that you have that as your motivation and digital equity and access.

 

00;18;26;24 - 00;19;04;14

Bratton Riley

And I will I will add that direct technology. We also look at access from an access ability perspective. And we have been helping many departments within State of California, at least to make sure that they have access for the disabled from an ADA perspective, and that the all people can access the information if there is tax information, if there is housing information, that people with disabilities can also access them.

 

00;19;04;14 - 00;19;31;08

Bratton Riley

And that's also part of that equity that you spoke about. It is 100%. And I appreciate you mentioning that in an earlier response, you mentioned increase of innovative technology as something that's been happening, and that's very true and you've led many teams. So my next question is what inspired year innovation on your team? How do you inspire your team to be innovative?

 

00;19;31;10 - 00;20;08;00

Bratton Riley

What do you tell them to go and do in order to be innovative? Well, it's you know, the innovation comes from the mission, so we're always trying to innovate to, you know, to help us achieve our goals. You know, one area specifically is how do we use A.I. technology to provide an accurate answer to a question? This is a journey through technology that's ever evolving to do that.

 

00;20;08;00 - 00;20;37;18

Bratton Riley

And when you think about the local government as an example of the variety of services and thus the variety of questions that might come in are quite extreme. You know, local governments help residents find their lost dogs and help them get business licenses and help them get a parking permit and everything in between. None of those things have any correlation to each other.

 

00;20;37;18 - 00;21;21;13

Bratton Riley

So when you look at data and how to build an AI system that can accurately answer such a wide variety of questions, it's a big challenge. And so we're all aware that's a big challenge that we're constantly working on. Another is multi-language capability. The technology is, you know, the technology does not exist for APIs. A perfect translation from different from Colombian Spanish to Castellano, Spanish or Peruvian Spanish, and have the proper context for all of those.

 

00;21;21;13 - 00;21;45;18

Bratton Riley

We're just not there yet. So what can we do in the interim to try to enable our brothers and sisters that would prefer to speak a different language in the US? How do we help them in the same ways that we can help an English speakers? So those are examples of things that we're pushing hard on as we innovate in those areas.

 

00;21;45;20 - 00;22;08;10

Davood Ghods

That's fantastic. I wish you all the best. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. We need all the help we can get. We need all the wishes we can get. But this is a great area to be innovative and help others as well. You know, we are model direct acknowledges that we are the human side of tech. And I am so glad that you have touched on that. On your response to other questions. But the next couple of questions are a little personal. What does something that would surprise people about your background or interests?

 

00;22;08;10 - 00;23;11;22

Bratton Riley

Well, I've spent 12 years in a completely unrelated space in international shipping and port terminal development, which was an amazing life experience, and took me to places like Cuba and Dominican Republic and Central and South America working for a small family business that happened to be here in Charleston and, you know, the the it was interesting, the company we worked for was the first U.S. flagged ship to enter the to be authorized to enter the harbor of Havana, Cuba, in the early 2000s because the US changed

 

00;23;11;22 - 00;23;41;11

Bratton Riley

its laws on how on that American farmers could now export their goods to Cuba. And we carried the first shipment of those goods back in the day. So that created a very warm and interesting relationship that we had in in shipping a lot of us food cargo to Cuba. So that's something pretty interesting about part of my life that not as many people know about.

 

00;23;41;14 - 00;24;11;28

Davood Ghods

Hmm, very nice, very well rounded, but it or just not correlated at all. But no, it's good from different parts. Yeah, but then where can people find you and keep tabs on what you're working on? How can people support your work?  

 

00;24;12;00 - 00;24;40;16

Bratton Riley

Thank you so much. Our website is cytiva and I'll spell it at city ib0t dot i o. My email is Bratton. We are 82 in at city board i o. And I'm on LinkedIn. I'm frequently there and I would love to help any government agency out or anyone is interested in the technology or any kind of touch point. Anything that we can do to support other vendors or folks that want to get more engaged in, you know, touch points that involve our mission.

 

00;24;40;16 - 00;25;10;13

Davood Ghods

We're honored to connect with them. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your insights today. Bratton. Thank you to all the listeners out there, too, for joining us as well. We will see you in the next episode of Davood for Thought, where we will shed more light on the human side of tech.

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