How Blanko brought 24/7 citizen service to Quebec municipalities, big and small

90%

average positive response rate

200+

municipalities work with Blanko

24/7

answers in French

At a glance

Founded in 2007 and based in Joliette, Quebec, Blanko builds digital products for municipalities and works with more than 200 of them, from larger cities to small towns. Its AI agent, Roméo, is built on Chatbase and gives municipalities a 311-style service that answers residents’ questions 24/7, in French. Across all of its platforms, Blanko serves 2.2 million citizens.

“We deploy Chatbase-powered chatbots across municipal websites and citizen portals to help residents quickly access reliable information and services.”

Beverly St-André, AI Project Integration Specialist, Blanko

The challenge: residents’ questions don’t keep office hours

Municipal work is still marked by silos and paper, and residents’ questions come at all hours. Most of them ask the same things: waste collection, activities and recreation, municipal bylaws and taxes. Bylaws may be well written, but they are not always in plain language, so residents can end up digging through them or calling the city to make sure they have it right. Blanko was already running chatbots on municipal websites, but they relied mostly on static content that had to be updated by hand, which made it hard to keep residents informed when things changed quickly.

“Before using Chatbase, keeping these assistants up to date required a lot of manual work and mostly static content, making it difficult to deliver timely information.”

Beverly St-André, AI Project Integration Specialist, Blanko

The build: more than switching on an AI agent

Answering on behalf of a city takes more than a generic chatbot. Blanko used Chatbase as the AI foundation and brought its municipal expertise on top, building the layers a Quebec municipality needs:

Live data through custom actions, including waste collection schedules, boil water advisories and road work notices
Systems Blanko built around Chatbase and connected to its own municipal products
A structured municipal information bank that keeps answers precise and easy to read, plus daily retraining so residents get the current version
A privacy-interception layer and processes built for Quebec’s Law 25
Escalation that notifies someone on the municipal team when a message needs a person
A dedicated French-language conversation interface and a dashboard built specifically for municipalities

“With Chatbase, custom actions allow us to provide real-time data such as waste collection schedules, boil water advisories, and road work notices, while significantly reducing repetitive inquiries handled by municipal teams.”

Beverly St-André, AI Project Integration Specialist, Blanko

Built for Quebec’s privacy law

For a city, answering residents also means protecting them. Quebec’s Law 25, adopted in 2021 and fully in force since September 2024, tightened the rules public bodies, including municipalities, must follow when they handle personal information. Blanko built Roméo for that legal reality, with a privacy-interception layer and processes designed around Law 25. Chatbase handled the AI layer on a SOC 2 Type II and GDPR-compliant platform, and Blanko brought the privacy work specific to Quebec municipalities.

Why Chatbase: a solid foundation with room to build

When Blanko set out to bring a virtual assistant to municipalities, it wanted a solid foundation with room to build around it. Blanko has its own team of developers and knew what it wanted to build. Chatbase’s flexibility let the team develop several systems around the agent and connect its own systems together, which is what makes Roméo fit the municipal world. And because Chatbase was already well established, Blanko could launch Roméo quickly.

“We were able to rely on Chatbase, which already had a well-established, solid solution. That allowed us to move forward quickly without compromising the quality of our services.”

Beverly St-André, AI Project Integration Specialist, Blanko

Seeing what residents actually ask

Every conversation with Roméo is also a signal. Blanko’s dashboard shows municipalities, in real time, which topics come up again and again, when questions peak, and where Roméo’s answers could be better. Cities can use those insights to improve their website content and fill in what Roméo knows, so the next resident gets a better answer. Instead of guessing what residents need, municipal teams can see it.

“What we especially value is the flexibility of the API, it allowed us to rebuild our frontend specifically for municipal use cases and to design a custom dashboard where users can monitor chatbot statistics and improve their website content accordingly.”

Beverly St-André, AI Project Integration Specialist, Blanko

Big cities and small towns, but especially small towns

Roméo helps municipalities of every size, but it matters most for small ones. A small town often doesn’t have the people in-house to answer the same frequent questions again and again, let alone after hours. With Roméo, a small town can answer those questions 24/7, in French, just like a much larger city.

“Roméo helps large and small municipalities alike, but especially the small ones, because they don’t always have the staff in-house to answer citizens’ frequently asked questions.”

Beverly St-André, AI Project Integration Specialist, Blanko

The results: a front desk that never closes

Roméo averages a positive response rate of around 90%, reaching 99% in some cities. In Joliette, a resident looking for the next bulky-waste pickup asked Roméo in the website chat and got the date right away, instead of scrolling the city’s Facebook page or digging through its website. Another resident used Roméo to work out the permits needed for a home extension and a backyard pool, getting simplified answers instead of reading through the bylaws or calling the city. Municipal teams, in turn, see significantly fewer repetitive inquiries.

“Overall, I found it super fast and efficient. The answers were precise, and I didn’t waste my time searching for information.”

Joliette resident

What’s next: from answers to a full service counter

Blanko’s next step is to turn Roméo into a one-stop service counter, where residents can ask questions, submit requests, report problems and apply for permits directly in Roméo.

“I think if every city in Canada had Roméo, we could make big gains in citizen experience. […] It could really change the lives of many citizens, and also lighten the load for municipalities.”

Beverly St-André, AI Project Integration Specialist, Blanko

About

Blanko is a Quebec digital agency that builds websites, citizen portals and AI agents for municipalities.

Industry

Digital agency / Public sector

Size

11-50

Founded

2007

Chatbase plan

Enterprise