Citibot is currently offering free services to municipalities to support their coronavirus response efforts. Local governments can use Citibot’s Interactive Text Alerts to send citizens text messages with updates regarding COVID-19 free of charge for 60 days during the projected peak of the spread of COVID-19.

“In these unprecedented times, the voice of the trusted source, which is local government, needs to be heard in every household,” said Bratton Riley, co-founder and CEO of Citibot. “We want to help cities and counties get their COVID updates out to all interested residents via mobile messaging. Since 97 percent of U.S. adults now send text messages, it is the most accessible channel for communicating important information and updates.”

Features of Citibot’s Interactive Text Alerts include:

• Real time updates from municipalities directly to their citizens

• Interactive platform for residents to send questions back to city/county staff if needed

• Marketing support to help local governments promote the service to all citizens

“As we move into this virtual, quarantined world for a while, our inter-connectivity will become critical,” said Riley. “We are all in this together, and we need to work together to fight this virus, to take care of each other, and to get people working again.”

Boulder, Colorado began using our Interactive Text Alerts in early March to send out COVID-19 updates to their residents and Tukwila, Washington will soon provide this service to their citizens as well.

Joseph Todd, Chief Information Officer for the City of Tukwila said, “We want to connect with our residents through all available channels and launching TukText with Citibot enables us to communicate vital COVID-19 updates with residents through text message so they stay informed and safe.”

Other cities and organization who will use our Interactive Text Alerts to update their residents are:

• Rio Vista, California

• Williamsport, Pennsylvania

• Long Beach Transit, California

Citibot will take the pressure off of city staff to broadcast and receive information because our system is so easy to deploy and manage. Local governments can reduce inbound communications by getting the word out to more citizens via text message (SMS), which is the most accessible communication channel. Residents can also ask questions directly to Citibot regarding the coronavirus in their community and our chatbot will immediately respond with information pulled from the local government’s COVID-19 page on their website.

Citibot will provide this service to 25 municipalities for free up to the first 10,000 messages per month per customer.

For more information on Citibot’s free Interactive Text Alerts, please email us at chat@citibot.io.

UPDATE: May 24, 2021 — As of today, Citibot is no longer offering free text alert services for COVID-19 communications. We invite you to join us for our next monthly live demo or schedule a one-on-one demo with the button below if you are interested in getting a quote for this product.

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