Orland Park Works to Fix Its AI Phone System

Orland Park, a village in Illinois, is working to fix problems with its new AI-powered phone system after residents complained they could not reach village staff. The village launched a chatbot named Humphrey in August to help answer phone calls. When some residents tried to use the system, they couldn't get connected to a real person. Village leaders listened to the complaints and are now making changes to solve the problem.

Two residents, Karen Drake and Pam Stepansky, spoke up at an October 5 Village Board meeting about their bad experiences. Stepansky said she called the village four times and never reached a person. Drake said she spent about two hours trying to get an answer to a simple question about a local event called the Great Pumpkin Party. She ended up driving to Village Hall in person just to get help.

The village's Director of Information Technology, Tad Spencer, thanked both women for speaking up. He said that without their complaints, the village would not have known the system was broken. Spencer explained that when staff tested Humphrey before launch, the problems did not show up. This means the bugs only appeared when real callers used the system.

Spencer explained what went wrong with Humphrey. The AI system could not transfer callers to the operator or the Parks and Recreation Department because of issues with the phone numbers in the system. The village is now working with a vendor, which is a company that provides services, to add the correct phone numbers. Once that is fixed, Humphrey will be turned back on for calls.

Spencer also shared data about how Humphrey performed in September. Out of 2,687 calls the village received that month, 71 percent were transferred to the right department. About 91 percent of callers seemed to have a neutral experience, while 6 percent had a negative one. Spencer said he wants to lower that negative number even more by studying the calls and finding ways to improve.

Mayor Jim Dodge said the experience with Humphrey was actually useful. The feedback from real residents helped technicians figure out exactly where the problem was. He said the issue was in the phone system itself, not in the AI technology. Dodge said he still believes AI can help the village provide good service at a lower cost.

The village also approved a new contract this week worth $43,200. The money will go to a company called Zion Cloud Solutions, based in Deerfield, to help monitor and improve a different AI tool called Google Gemini. Gemini has been used by village staff since last month to help store old data and answer questions. Spencer said Gemini answered 97 percent of staff questions last month, which he called a success.

Before using Gemini, the village was spending $85,000 a year to store data in a system they were barely using. Switching to Gemini has lowered that cost by a large amount. Spencer showed village trustees the new system at Monday's meeting so they could see how it works. The contract with Zion Cloud Solutions will begin in January and covers 40 hours of work per month for one year.