AI switchboard for town halls and public bodies: answer, inform, route
At peak times, part of the calls to the switchboard go unanswered — and every missed call is someone who calls back, travels in, or gives up on their procedure. Your voice agent picks up, gives information on opening hours and procedures, books appointments and routes to the right department. Hosted in France — on local inference or an isolated resource — the data stays under control. The public officer keeps the lead: complex cases are transferred to them.
Updated on
Average wait brought below 10 seconds. A breakdown by reason is available.
⛓ Source · call log + opening hours and procedures published by the authority
Any request falling outside the published framework is routed to an officer, never invented.
✎ Action · appointment proposed in the department's diary — the public officer keeps the lead
On the switchboard of a local authority or a public body, a Blue Lemon Agent voice agent picks up, informs on opening hours and procedures, books appointments and routes to the right department — including at peak times and out of hours. It connects to your existing telephony, without changing your numbers. It runs on local inference or is hosted in France: no citizen data is exposed to a foreign service, architecture designed to reduce exposure to extraterritorial legislation, location alone not being enough to guarantee immunity. The caller is told they are speaking to an AI, and complex cases are transferred to a public officer. Live within a few weeks. Your public-sector staff write to it from Microsoft Teams, Slack or their email, and your users reach it on WhatsApp Business, the website chat, email or VoIP telephony — with no account to create and nothing to install. Reaching the administration from the tool people already have means less non-take-up of rights and equal access to the service. These connections are included in every plan, at no extra cost, within the number of connections your level includes.
Reference points describing our offer, not results measured at a client. The scale of the gain is confirmed by a pilot on your own scope.
Why an AI switchboard — and why administrations hesitate
The phone remains the first channel of contact with public services, particularly for people least comfortable with digital tools. But the switchboard saturates at peak times, unanswered calls turn into journeys and call-backs, and the data exchanged belongs to individuals.
! The issue
The switchboard is caught between a call volume concentrated in a few time slots and a constant reception headcount. Missed calls weigh on the continuity of public service and on equal treatment for the public. Yet plugging in a consumer voice agent would mean entrusting contact details, reasons for calling and civil status data to a third party, often hosted outside Europe and subject to the Cloud Act.
✓ Our answer
An AI switchboard is only of interest to an administration if it is sovereign and confidential by design. Local inference or an isolated resource hosted in France, systematic human oversight, complex cases transferred to an officer: the time saved at reception is never paid for in lost confidentiality. The aim is not to replace the front-desk officer, but to guarantee that no member of the public is left without an answer.
The public's data: sovereignty & compliance
A switchboard handles contact details, reasons for calling and personal data. Here is how the architecture of our agents protects them, call by call.
Local inference
The agent can run on a machine belonging to the authority: no recording or transcript leaves the network, nothing passes through a public cloud.
Hosting in France
Otherwise, a dedicated and isolated resource, hosted in France under French law — the public's data: processing and access within the European Union targeted by the architecture.
Reduced extraterritorial exposure
Exposure of the public's data to the Cloud Act and FISA 702 is reduced by design; location alone does not guarantee immunity.
One isolated resource per organisation
No pooling of data: an environment strictly dedicated to your authority or administration.
Encryption & controlled access
Encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access (RBAC), strong authentication and logging of the calls handled.
AI Act: governed deployment
An agent strictly in support; the caller is told they are speaking to an AI; human transfer and oversight from end to end.
What depends on the architecture chosen These points are not general guarantees: they are settled deployment by deployment, in the quotation.
- The applicable location is that of the architecture set out in the quotation and verified before commissioning.
- Local execution is announced only for the configuration explicitly described and accepted in the quotation.
- The applicable isolation depends on the deployment mode set out in the quotation; no dedicated isolation is presumed.
- The encryption mechanisms in transit and at rest, their components and key management are those documented for the architecture chosen.
- Roles and permissions are configured and accepted for the identities and systems actually connected.
- The events logged, their content, their retention period and who may access them are defined for the deployment chosen.
See the agent at work
4 real situations, taken from those that come up most often. Pick one: the exchange unfolds as it would in your organisation.
A scripted demonstration. These exchanges show how the agent behaves — its sources, its refusals, what it leaves to your teams. Nothing is sent from this page, no model is queried here, and the matters named are fictional. That is precisely what we promise your data.
The behaviours shown here — monitoring, automation rules, routing and reminders — are configured with you during deployment, from your tools, your rules and your thresholds.
The architecture points named in these exchanges — location, local execution, isolation, encryption, role-based access, logging — are not a guarantee attached to the demonstration: they are those of the architecture set out in your quotation, and verified before commissioning.
· The planning department has answered no transferred call since Tuesday 2 pm. 23 calls were put through, 23 came back to the switchboard.
· A greeting message announces a closure that ended on 31/07. It has played on every call for eight days.
· Waiting time before transfer has doubled on Tuesdays, and only on Tuesdays, since the rota change of 09/06.
· 19 callers hung up during the greeting last week, all after more than 50 seconds. morning-watch_4-flags.pdf4 flags · calls concerned
⛓ Source · call log, messages played, department rotas
What happened: each transfer to planning rang out, then came back to the switchboard. Each time I offered a callback rather than leaving the caller to ring again. 17 accepted, 6 preferred to call back themselves.
What I do not know: why the department is not answering. An absence, a misconfigured divert, an unplugged handset — all three produce the same silence, and nothing in my data separates them.
What it costs meanwhile: the 17 callbacks are waiting on an officer picking up. If the line stays silent tomorrow, those are 17 promises the authority does not keep.
The list is ready, with the time of each call and the stated subject. unanswered-transfers_23.pdf23 calls · 17 callbacks pending
⛓ Source · transfer log, callback queue
Routing follows your organisation: the unanswered transfers to the head of planning and to the front-office manager, both together — one can explain, the other has to honour the 17 callbacks; the stale message to whoever administers it; Tuesday's waiting time to the front-office manager, with the rota alongside; the hang-ups with the greeting's duration, because the cause is probably there.
With a chase: 4 h on the transfers — every hour adds unkept callbacks; 48 h on the rest. Then a weekly summary to the chief executive: by department, never by officer.
What that gives you over the week: 23 calls to a silent extension that were not lost, of which 17 residents called back or queued for a callback and 6 answered on the spot; a stale greeting flagged on the eighth day; Tuesday's waiting time traced to the rota that created it; and 19 hang-ups traced to a greeting longer than fifty seconds.
What that gives the service back from tomorrow: no more lost calls at peak times or out of hours, appointments placed straight onto the right department's diary, and officers who pick up only the complex cases, with the reason and the context of the call already noted. The decision is theirs, and it reaches them in minutes. The resident who calls at 8.10 gets the same answer as the one who calls at 17.50, and so does the one who calls on a Saturday morning.
On what I consult: access is opened department by department, every call and every transfer is logged, and access is withdrawn with a single word. And no recording or transcript leaves the authority or France. The caller is told in the first sentence that they are speaking to an AI.
The next step is ready: fifteen minutes to plug into your telephony without changing your numbers, and I go through the greeting and the transfer tree with you.
✎ Proposal · watch and chases to be configured — you set the thresholds
What they heard on pick-up, in five seconds: "… Town Hall, good morning. You are speaking to a voice agent. You may ask for a front-office officer at any time."
What triggers the transfer: an explicit request — "someone", "a person", "an officer" — or three exchanges without the request being understood. None of these rules tries to prolong the call.
What I pass to the officer: the stated subject, what has already been said, and the reason for the transfer. They do not have to make the caller repeat.
Over the week: 47 transfers on explicit request, 12 after three fruitless exchanges. No caller was held against their will, and that is the only statistic that matters here. transfers-to-an-officer_59.pdf59 transfers · reason for each
⛓ Source · transfer rules, this week's call log
The 12 requests, grouped: 7 concerned an individual case in progress — "where is my application?"; 3 concerned a subject your base does not cover; 2 were inaudible.
The first seven are not solved by a better voice agent. An individual case means identifying the caller, and you decided — rightly — that I do not do that on the phone.
What I can do for those, if you approve: recognise them in one exchange instead of three, and transfer immediately announcing "query on a case in progress". Three minutes' less wait per caller, and an officer who knows why they are being called.
The 3 with no answer in the base go to the department concerned, with the subject. The 2 inaudible ones are not a rules problem: they are calls from a noisy place, and an immediate transfer is the right answer.
✎ Proposal · recognising case queries — the transfer stays immediate
Across the three previous campaigns — January 2025, September 2025, January 2026:
· First-day volume: 3.4 to 4.1 times an ordinary Monday.
· The peak falls between 8:30 and 10 am, never in the afternoon.
· 62% of calls concern three questions: what documents to bring, the closing date, and whether it can be done online.
What that allows: all three answers are in your base, current, and can be served without a transfer. On a peak at four times normal volume, roughly six calls in ten will never reach an officer.
What I do not forecast: Monday's volume. Three campaigns are not a law, and this one is about a new scheme — I give a range and its assumptions, not a figure. campaigns_3-previous.pdf3 campaigns · volumes and subjects
⛓ Source · 3 previous campaigns, knowledge base
· The three most-asked answers are verified current and served without transfer.
· The campaign greeting is ready; it states the scheme in one sentence before the question — which removes the calls that only want confirmation.
· The callback queue is armed: beyond the threshold you set, the caller is offered a callback rather than a wait.
The question that comes back to you: from how many callers waiting should a callback be offered? Too low and you turn 90-second calls into callbacks to organise; too high and people hang up. On your previous campaigns, hang-ups start beyond two minutes of waiting.
And a proposal for Monday: a checkpoint at 10 am and one at noon to the front-office manager — volume received, share handled without transfer, average wait, and the subjects that keep coming and that the base does not cover. That last point is what serves Tuesday.
✎ Proposal · callback threshold to set — the configuration is yours
Picking up: the 118 calls in the 8.30–9.15 a.m. slot are taken in parallel, on the first ring, with no queue and no hold music. Over four measured months, not one call lost at peak, whereas 19 callers hung up during the welcome announcement in last week alone, all after more than 50 seconds.
Giving information, and on what: opening hours of the eight departments, addresses and access, procedures and documents to supply, collection days, approved charges. Every answer comes from what the authority has published — website page, order, council resolution — with its date, and the caller hears it: “according to the order of 4 July”. Across 4,120 calls in three months, 2,925 — 71 % — are answered that way from end to end.
What goes elsewhere, and at once: as soon as a question touches a named file, an individual situation or a decision, I transfer and I announce the transfer. The caller knows who they are speaking to within five seconds, and can ask for a public officer from the first word.
What that gives back: those 2,925 calls took your front desk 3 minutes 20 each. More than 162 hours given back over three months, rounded down — and your two officers handle the remaining 1,195 calls without being cut off every four minutes.
The figure that does not flatter me: for eight days I gave out a closure that had ended on 31 July, played on every call: 340 callers told something untrue. I was reading the announcement as text, without reading its end date. Every published item now carries its validity end date; one that has passed stops me instead of being spoken — I switch to the department concerned and flag it to you the same morning. Since then, 4 out-of-date items blocked before being served.
⛓ Sourced · 118 calls taken in parallel, 2,925 of 4,120 calls answered, 340 misinformed callers behind the fix
What I recorded: 1,340 calls over the month, of which 214 outside opening hours — 138 between 17.30 and 20.00, 51 on Saturday morning, 25 before 8.30.
What they were asking about, and this is what makes the figure usable: 171 of the 214 concerned three items the authority has already published — a department's hours and address, the documents for a common procedure, the collection day. They were answered on the spot, on the first ring, with no queue and no hold music, and every answer cited its source: “under the order of 4 July”.
The other 43: 31 booked an appointment straight into the relevant department's diary, with the documents to bring; 12 asked for a person — I offered them a call-back as soon as the office opened, with the subject already noted, and all twelve were called back before 10.00.
What that changes, and it has to be said plainly: before, those 214 calls rang out into the void. A resident who works the same hours as the town hall had, for a two-minute question, only the choice of taking half a day off or giving up. Equal access is decided exactly there, and it can be counted.
The next step I propose: that the evening greeting say in one sentence that an appointment can be booked right away. Of the 214, 31 booked one without being told; it is the 138 calls in the 17.30–20.00 band that would gain most from it. Tell me yes and the greeting is live this evening. out-of-hours-calls_214.pdf214 calls · 171 answered on the spot
⛓ Source · July call log, department diaries, call-back queue
The three families:
· 23 concerned an individual case in progress. They require identifying the caller, and you decided — rightly — that I should not do that over the phone. They go to the front-office officer with the stated subject and what has already been said: nothing has to be repeated, and all 23 were handled the same day.
· 12 concerned an item absent from your knowledge base. I have written them up — seven lines each, with the source they rest on — and the three most asked cover 8 of the 12 calls on their own. The review and the go-live stay with the authority: a front-office answer binds it, and that is what makes it enforceable.
· 12 came from people kept at a distance by written or administrative language. I transfer them to a front-office officer, and I will tell you why that is the right move: producing a plain-language version, an easy-read transcription, a translation or a spoken version of an item is not part of this switchboard's core offer — that is the work of the Accessibility and inclusion agent, which sets its languages, its formats and its human approval. What I bring is the figure on which opening that piece of work is decided: those 12 calls all turned on the same three items. That is not scatter, it is an audience, and it is measured rather than assumed.
What that gives overall: of the month's 1,340 calls, none lost. 1,293 found their answer in the exchange or with the right officer in one transfer, and the remaining 47 are here, counted with what explains them and what was done with them.
✎ Support · 47 calls set out — the review of the 12 items and the opening of the accessibility work stay with the authority
Your case is not here? That is exactly what a 15-minute conversation is for. Book the free audit →
The facets of an AI switchboard
Each use corresponds to a capability we deploy on your switchboard. All of them work in support, the caller is informed, and complex cases go to a public officer.
Picking up & informing
Answering everyday questions: opening hours, addresses, procedures, documents required — from the information published by the authority.
Appointment booking
Offering slots, scheduling in the right department's diary and confirming the appointment by text message, with no human intervention.
Absorbing call peaks
Handling the volume at peak times and out of hours with no lost calls, to preserve continuity of service.
Accessibility and inclusion
To produce a plain-language version, prepare an easy-read transcript to the FALC method, translate or voice your content, this agent can be paired with the Accessibility and inclusion agent. None of these capabilities is included in what this offer covers as standard.
On quote View the agent page →Need to go further?
These agents handle a different business process, with their own owner and their own price. They are added to this one.
Multichannel information
Extending the switchboard with a 24/7 multilingual chatbot, with the same sourced answers across every channel.
Multichannel administrative information from 700 € incl. VAT / month Administrative information →Help with online procedures
Guiding the user step by step through an online procedure and pointing them to the right form or service.
Support with online procedures from 780 € incl. VAT / month Help with procedures →Voice agent (AI switchboard)
Call handling, appointments, transfer.
Voice agent (AI switchboard) from 856 € incl. VAT / month Discover the agent →In 15 minutes we identify the agent that will give your staff the most time back — without oversizing the project.
How many calls can a switchboard save?
By always picking up and handling the everyday requests, an administration can aim to eliminate lost calls in the saturated slots — freeing officer time for the situations that genuinely need it.
The stages of your AI agent project
Audit & scoping
15 minutes to target the use case with the best return.
Quote or direct sign-up
A catalogue offer is bought online; a specific need gets a costed quote.
Design
We design the agent and its guardrails.
Integration & testing
We connect your tools to the agent, which is itself hosted in France.
Rollout
Going live and training your team.
Operation
Continuous supervision and improvement.
Three options, one voice agent
A switchboard voice agent (picking up, information, appointments, routing), installed and operated for you. Choose according to how you work. Prices exclude VAT — annual subscription, the time it takes for the gains to settle in.
Setup + controlled subscription
- Installation, configuration and training for your teams
- Operation, human oversight, updates and support
- Sovereign hosting in France, a dedicated and isolated resource
All inclusive, no setup fee
- Setup included (installation, configuration, training)
- Operation, human oversight, updates and support
- Sovereign hosting in France, managed end to end
On site, you own it
- Hardware installed on your premises (you own it)
- French / European AI models run locally
- Secure remote maintenance (Pro support included)
Four guarantees that matter to an administration
Your questions, our answers
Do we keep our phone numbers?
Does the caller know they are speaking to an AI?
Which use case should we test first?
Is the public's data protected?
What happens if the agent does not know the answer?
Does the agent work outside opening hours?
How long does it take to deploy an AI switchboard?
Does the agent state that it is an artificial intelligence?
Are calls recorded, and can someone object?
Which tools can users use to reach the agent?
Can the agent notify users by text message?
Other solutions for reception and relations with the public
Let us estimate the potential for your switchboard
15 minutes to identify the call slot with the best return — hosted in France, supervised, with no commitment.