Kingsport approves six‑month pilot of AI customer‑service tool, expands Hansen CIS support

Kingsport’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen on Aug. 19 approved a six‑month, no‑cost pilot of a generative AI customer‑service tool tied to the city’s Hansen customer information system and approved a change order to bring two vendor staff on-site to help with the system migration.

City Manager introduced the items as part of the city’s strategic plan work on artificial intelligence and customer information systems. “This gives us an opportunity about 544 hours that we can work with this, see if we like it,” the City Manager said, adding the pilot is expected to run six months and “there is really no cost to the city to do a trial with this.”

The board approved a standalone statement of work for the AI pilot (listed in the packet under the vendor name cited in the meeting) and later approved change order No. 3 to the city’s Hansen CIS implementation contract to fund two Hansen personnel to assist with data migration and implementation tasks.

Why it matters: the city’s customer service operation handles utility billing and similar requests; the pilot is intended to automate common inquiries, provide multilingual support and reduce repetitive phone‑tree frustrations. Council members repeatedly emphasized the need to preserve access to human help and to ensure records created by the system remain subject to public‑records rules.

Discussion and safeguards Alderman Phillips questioned whether AI‑generated records would be subject to the Tennessee Public Records Act. The City Manager replied, “Anything that can be kept, anything that is recorded, lands on a hard drive or in a desk drawer, wherever it may be, yes. It is subject to that.” He added that if an interaction is not retained it would not be subject to records retention requirements.

Board members asked about accuracy, training and hours of operation. The City Manager said the vendor is scripting and training the system now and that staff will provide demos for the board: “as we get to a place where we can actually demo it, we'll have it set up, and we'll let you guys call in” to test it. He said the vendor intends the system to sense frustration and transfer callers to a human when needed.

Pilot scope and next steps The pilot includes setup and training time (the packet referenced about 544 hours of setup), live operation for six months and vendor monitoring. If the city and vendor judge performance acceptable, staff may return to the board with a recommendation about continued use or contract expansion after the trial.

Board action The board voted 7–0 to approve the AI pilot statement of work and 7–0 to approve change order No. 3 to the Hansen CIS contract for implementation support.

What’s next Staff said they will continue training and testing, provide demos for the board and monitor the pilot’s performance and customer experience during the six‑month trial. The board’s discussion indicates ongoing oversight and an intent to reassess before any longer‑term purchase.