City debuts redesigned e-newsletter, multilingual chatbot and mobile app to boost resident engagement

Palm Beach Gardens’ communications office presented three resident-engagement tools on March 6: a redesigned monthly e-newsletter called The Pinnacle, a multilingual website chatbot named ChatPBG and a new city mobile app, PPG Now.

Candace Temple, the city’s communications director, said The Pinnacle has a 54% open rate among subscribers—higher than industry averages she cited—and that staff can now capture more analytics after switching platforms. Temple asked residents to sign up via a QR code shared at the meeting.

She also described ChatPBG, a multilingual chatbot rolled out with the city website redesign. Temple said ChatPBG crawls the city's website to help users find pages, report issues and answer frequently asked questions; staff review chat logs monthly to improve the bot's knowledge base. The city reported more than 1,500 ChatPBG interactions to date, mostly in English.

Temple said PPG Now, the new mobile app announced in the March Pinnacle, will provide push notifications for traffic incidents, road construction, meeting links and event cancellations. The app also bundles commonly used city services (recreation registration, golf tee times and the request tracker). City staff said a test push notification went out to attendees about the meeting’s livestream and agenda link.

Ending: Council praised the communications team for the upgrades and encouraged residents to subscribe and download the app; staff said they will continue to refine the chatbot's responses and expand promotion of the app and newsletter.