AI-Powered Chatbots Revolutionize Building Permit Process in Kelowna

Kelowna, a vibrant community in British Columbia’s interior with a growing population of 145,000, is no stranger to the challenges of housing affordability and availability. Over the past five years, the city has witnessed unprecedented growth and a surge in development permit applications.

To meet the growing demand for housing while maintaining high service quality, the City of Kelowna’s Planning and Development Services team strives to process building permit applications efficiently. However, they identified a bottleneck — staff were spending too much time handling general inquiries instead of processing permits.

Expanding Service and Supporting Staff With Artificial Intelligence (AI)

With over 10 types of permits, ranging from simple sign installations to complex commercial developments, the permitting process can be overwhelming, often leading residents to turn to staff as the first point of contact for answers. The planning team believed that educating applicants would reduce inquiries, allowing staff to focus more on processing permits.

Enter AI-powered chatbots, which transformed Kelowna’s approach by enhancing efficiency and supporting new home construction for its fast-growing population. Launched on 3 October 2023, these chatbots are available on the building permit pages of kelowna.ca, delivering instant, consistent, and accurate information 24/7.

The primary audiences for these chatbots include Kelowna homeowners, contractors, and homebuilders. With 62,000 households in the city, 65% of which are owner-occupied, and a record $1.75 billion in building permits issued in 2023, the impact of this technology has the potential to be significant.

The chatbot integrates a Q&A functionality linked to an expert knowledge base called “guided journeys” to help users navigate the building permit process. It also uses generative AI to fill gaps when answers aren’t available and incorporates map overlay data to provide accurate, property-specific information.

The guided journeys empower homeowners by providing step-by-step instructions for various permit applications, with answers to questions like “What permit should I apply for?”; “What can I do on my property?”; or “What will it cost?”

Meanwhile, more experienced users like contractors and homebuilders can ask more detailed questions and get quick answers, day or night, thanks to curated responses from departmental experts and generative AI that accesses information from specific city documents.

The combination of these technologies means that the user experience can be customized for any user and their varied level of experience with the building permit process.

Setting Measurable Objectives

The city began using chatbots in 2020 to support customer experience and free up staff for other tasks. Today, eight existing chatbots, covering topics like airport and snow, handle 25-75% of user inquiries without requiring a staff touchpoint. However, because of the complexity of the permitting process and diverse audiences, a basic Q&A chatbot wasn’t sufficient to reduce calls. Instead, the city refined its approach, setting updated objectives based on insights from past chatbot implementations.

With these insights in mind, the city established three key objectives to ensure the chatbot would effectively support residents and staff:

• Objective 1: Create a trusted online resource for homeowners, contractors, and homebuilders to have building permit inquiries handled 24/7. Success to be measured by 10% expansion of service outside of regular work hours.
• Objective 2: Decrease the time staff spend responding to building permit inquiries and property regulations by 25%. Success to be measured by tracking the number and duration of calls and in-person interactions.
• Objective 3: Be a technology leader among other Canadian municipalities by sharing information about the project to help others explore or implement similar solutions. Success to be measured by type and number of engagements.

Learning From Users To Optimize Outcomes

Service design was invaluable in uncovering the intricate interactions and pinpointing pain points among users, which ultimately helped produce a groundbreaking new tool, focused on personalized service. The chatbot’s guided journeys educate less informed users, while curated responses and generative AI cater to more experienced users.

The city’s commitment to user satisfaction was reflected in two rounds of rigorous usability testing, where the product team identified challenges and seized opportunities for enhancement before the official launch. Both user groups praised the experience as efficient, user-friendly, and highly beneficial, with an average of 70% expressing their eagerness to use it again.

Given the complexity of the processes and the originality of the technology, the chatbot was soft launched to allow the team to monitor use and continuously make improvements to user experience and internal processes before promoting the tool more widely. To ensure accuracy and to avoid known challenges associated with AI pulling incorrect, unfiltered information from the web, the chatbot pulls information exclusively from the city’s own source material. To do this, the city created its own AI web service that accesses specific City documents only. The team also enlisted the help of a third-party cyber security company perform an application security assessment to ensure potential attackers couldn’t use chatbots to gain access to privileged information or perform unauthorized operations.

Early Success

Since the soft launch, the chatbot has shown promising results. In 2024, the chatbot handled 3,262 questions from 1,132 users, with over 23% of chats occurring outside work hours.

Kelowna's AI chatbots have not only received local and national media coverage but also earned an award from the Municipal Information Systems Association. The project team has led webinars and information-sharing sessions for other governments, further solidifying Kelowna's position as a technology leader among Canadian municipalities.

Today, the City of Kelowna follows the International Accreditation Service standard for application reviews, taking anywhere from two to 20 business days, depending on complexity. This stands in stark contrast to other B.C. municipalities, where it’s not uncommon for permit reviews to take anywhere from several months to a year. Ensuring swift permit processing is key to increasing housing supply and enhancing service for residents.

As Kelowna continues to innovate, the AI-powered chatbot project sets a new benchmark for efficient building permit processes, inspiring other municipalities to explore similar solutions — all while helping to accelerate much-needed home construction.

The Future of City Service

Building on the success of its chatbots, the City of Kelowna is initiating a multi-phase project to roll out a city-wide 311 service that will harness the power of digital assistants and AI to provide residents a seamless and accessible way to find answers, access services, report issues, provide feedback, and connect directly with city staff.

By doing so, the city aims to enhance customer service delivery, improve data collection and analysis, and streamline internal processes. This forward-thinking approach not only promises to improve the day-to-day lives of residents but also solidifies Kelowna's reputation as a leader in technological innovation among Canadian municipalities.