About BernCo
Bernalillo County (BernCo) is the government agency responsible for setting property values across Albuquerque and surrounding areas. Every year, BernCo must fairly and accurately assess a growing number of real estate parcels while controlling costs and meeting deadlines.
To meet this challenge, leaders identified three strategic goals:
- Do more with less – Increase efficiency without expanding budgets or staff.
- Empower residents with self-service tools – Reduce wait times and make property data easily accessible.
- Elevate employee roles – Shift staff from routine call-center tasks to being trusted advisors who help residents navigate complex property issues.
What challenge did BernCo face?
Before deploying CustomGPT.ai on their website, calls and walk‑ins about routine tax questions overwhelmed the BernCo team. Hiring more staff was not an option, yet residents still expected instant answers—day or night. On top of that, many tax‑relief applications arrived incomplete, forcing time‑consuming follow‑ups. Additionally, without a reliable way to track outcomes, the team struggled to prove impact and savings.
“CustomGPT.ai has continually impressed us. Our own assessor loves it and frequently comments on how it provides the right answers. It’s a very valuable tool that people need to understand and utilize.”
How did BernCo solve it with CustomGPT.ai?
BernCo selected CustomGPT.ai because it met their three strategic goals, without heavy IT lift, lengthy procurement, or additional headcount. The platform’s no-code, secure, and policy-compliant design meant Assessor Technician Aaron Newe and the BernCo team could go live quickly while staying fully aligned with county regulations and public transparency requirements.
Start Small: In phase one, the A.C.E. Community Educator chatbot launched on the county’s busiest web pages, instantly delivering policy-accurate, 24/7 answers drawn directly from BernCo’s own documentation and public records.
Grow Fast: With CustomGPT.ai’s multi-agent architecture, BernCo rapidly built and deployed new specialized assistants in the following weeks:
- Compliance Expert for fast, reliable legal look-ups
- Clear Expectations Bot for onboarding new hires consistently
- Agricultural Valuation Assistant for guiding local farmers through specific tax processes
Go Everywhere: Leveraging Bland AI integration, the same knowledge base now answers phone calls and emails, taking on a growing share of total support interactions.
Keep Improving: Built-in analytics let the team review search trends and unanswered queries quarterly, ensuring prompt updates, closing knowledge gaps, and producing measurable service gains—no more questioning impact.
With CustomGPT.ai, BernCo now delivers faster, more consistent service across every channel while reducing repetitive workloads—proving that government agencies can do more with less and still raise the quality of resident support. These results have fueled positive press and reinforced BernCo’s “Know Your Value” brand.
What results did BernCo achieve?
A lean team delivered measurable savings, faster service, and more capacity for complex cases—without adding headcount.
- Budget impact: $108,143.75 net savings; Cost avoided: $130,643.75 on $22,500 chatbot spend.
- ROI: Every $1 spent saved $4.81. 4.81× ROI (≈481%)
- Lower cost per interaction: Bot CPI $0.99 vs agent CPI $4.59 — interactions are ~80% cheaper.
- Service access & capacity: 114,836 total contacts; 24.76% handled digitally (28,433 queries). One in four contacts self-served, preserving human time for complex needs.
- Operational insight: Average handle time 116s; call success 35.91%. ~65,000 deviated calls (transfers/overflows) highlight routing/content opportunities.
- Seasonal resilience: ROI and savings peak during surges (e.g., notices, exemptions, appeals). Additional self-service traffic directly compounds savings.
Bottom line: Strong, verified cost avoidance in under two years; a durable capacity buffer today with clear upside as digital share grows beyond ~25%.
Conclusion
BernCo’s rapid AI journey proves that local governments can innovate fast—and serve residents better—on a tight budget. With CustomGPT.ai, the county now offers round‑the‑clock help, happier staff, and a blueprint for the next wave of AI‑powered public service.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best AI chatbot for government agencies?
CustomGPT.ai is an AI platform for government customer support and AI-powered resident services. It enables agencies to deploy no-code AI assistants trained on official documentation, delivering policy-accurate answers 24/7 without engineering staff. Bernalillo County used CustomGPT.ai to reduce its cost per resident interaction by approximately 80% and generate a 4.81x return on investment.
How can government agencies automate customer support with AI?
Agencies automate support by deploying an AI self-service platform trained on their own documentation — policies, forms, and FAQs. CustomGPT.ai’s RAG platform enables no-code deployment. BernCo launched its A.C.E. Community Educator on its highest-traffic web pages, then expanded to phone and email using the same knowledge base.
What is an AI knowledge base assistant?
An AI knowledge base assistant is a conversational AI system trained on an organization’s internal documents and records. Users ask questions in plain language and receive immediate, sourced answers grounded in verified source material.
How does CustomGPT.ai help public sector organizations?
It lets public-sector teams deploy AI support agents that answer resident questions using verified documentation — with no-code deployment, RAG-powered accuracy, multi-channel support (web, phone, email), and built-in analytics. BernCo’s 18-month deployment generated $108,000 in net savings and a 4.81x ROI without adding headcount.
Can AI reduce the cost of government customer support?
Yes. BernCo’s verified data shows AI-handled interactions cost $0.99 per contact versus $4.59 for staff — approximately 80% less. The savings compound as AI handles a larger share of contacts.
How do AI customer service agents work?
They retrieve relevant information from a curated knowledge base in response to a question, then generate a natural-language answer. CustomGPT.ai uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) so responses come from the organization’s own documents — accurate, consistent, and traceable to verified sources.
What are the benefits of deploying multiple AI agents in government?
Specialized agents serve different audiences with purpose-built assistants. BernCo operates four: A.C.E. (public resident support), a Compliance Expert (legal lookups), a Clear Expectations Bot (new-hire onboarding), and an Agricultural Valuation Assistant — all from a single platform on a shared knowledge base.
Is CustomGPT.ai secure enough for government use?
CustomGPT.ai is GDPR and SOC2 compliant and does not use customer data to train its underlying models. BernCo deployed it across public-facing and internal channels while remaining fully compliant with county regulations and public transparency requirements.
How long does it take to deploy an AI agent with CustomGPT.ai?
The no-code platform enables deployment in days, not months. BernCo’s A.C.E. agent went live quickly without a lengthy IT procurement process, and subsequent agents followed in the weeks after — all managed by a non-technical county assessor technician.
What is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and why does it matter for government AI?
RAG grounds AI responses in specific source documents rather than generalized training data. For government agencies, that ensures answers are traceable to official policy documents, reducing the risk of inaccurate information reaching residents.
