Smart City Duisburg: AI citizen services

Smart City Duisburg Innovation Center (SCDIC) is a municipal think tank driving innovation in public services across the city of Duisburg, Germany. To streamline citizen interactions and support municipal employees, SCDIC deployed AI agents for improved self-service across web, phone, and social media channels, including transactional services like utility meter reporting, HR inquiries, and IT support.

6 agents

Deployed within the first year

Voice UI

For power metering services

1000+

Subject areas covered

Discover Duisburg's journey!

Customer Service Automation with Cognigy.AI for smarter public services - YouTube

Customer Service Automation with Cognigy.AI for smarter public services

The challenge

Municipal organizations in the German city of Duisburg handled large volumes of citizen inquiries covering hundreds of different topics and services. Requests ranged from routine information needs to transactional processes, some creating a significant operational workload across departments.

Attracting and retaining qualified service personnel remained an ongoing challenge. Public service employees spent substantial time answering repetitive inquiries, ensuring availability and handling multiple channels which limited their ability to focus on higher-value tasks.

The challenge was to establish a scalable self-service model capable of supporting citizen-facing and internal service processes for multiple municipal organizations.

"Utilizing NiCE Cognigy with chat- and voice agents guarantees inquiries are streamlined and handled with the utmost quality. The consistency really makes a difference for a positive experience."

Stefan Soldat

CEO Duisburg-IT, Head of IT @DVV

The solution

SCDIC deployed six AI agents within the first year, including support for HR and IT service desk operations, as well as external citizen-facing services. One of these solutions enables citizens to submit utility meter readings through an automated voice experience connected directly to municipal backend systems like SAP.

Built on a low-code architecture, municipal employees can create, maintain, and expand AI agents without relying heavily on technical development resources. The platform’s integration capabilities enabled secure connections for different city systems, again, internally and externally.

The impact

The initiative improved access to municipal services and reduced the workload for public service employees. Routine inquiries and transactions can now be handled through self-service on web, phone and social media channels. Staff now spends a significantly shorter amount of time on repetitive requests and more time on important citizen needs.

Beyond individual use cases, the project established a scalable framework for future extension onto other use cases across the different municipal organizations. The successful deployment demonstrated how digital self-service can be implemented in different departments to deliver consistent experiences for citizens and employees alike.

Transactional Self-Service

Available on multiple channels

SAP-Integration

David Hoffmann

Head of Digital Innovation and Transformation @WBD

“The technical possibilities are huge as NiCE integrates with an array of backends and systems. Teaming up with NiCE Cognigy has helped our citizens access public services more conveniently via self-service, even through social media."