Columa gives cities, towns, and counties an AI receptionist, website chat, and resident help desk in one. Olive answers the phone 24/7, handles the routine questions — hours, utility billing, permits, trash pickup — and routes everything else to the right department with a written record.
Columa’s Government Help Desk is designed for local government — cities, towns, counties, and special districts. Front-desk workflows for the clerk’s office, utilities, public works, permits, and parks & rec. Not federal agencies.
City hall closes at five. Questions don't. Olive answers every call and chat — nights, weekends, holidays, storm days — so residents never land in a full voicemail box.
A water bill question, a pothole report, a permit status check — Olive sorts each request and sends it to the right desk with the details already collected.
Olive is trained on your own material — hours, fees, meeting schedules, forms, service days. When something isn't covered, she connects the resident to staff instead of guessing.
Calls and chats become logged, searchable requests with transcripts. Nothing lost on a sticky note, and a clean paper trail for follow-up.
The same help desk lives on your website as a chat assistant, so residents who'd rather type than call get the same answers and the same routing.
Olive absorbs the routine so your team handles the exceptions. Anything sensitive or urgent goes straight to a person — by rules you set.
Most resident contact is the same short list of questions, asked hundreds of times. Olive takes that list off your staff’s plate.
No. The Government Help Desk is built for local government — cities, towns, counties, and special districts. We don't serve federal agencies.
Columa deployments are scoped to stay outside CJIS territory. Olive handles general city services — utility billing, permits, public works, parks, business licensing, and routine requests — and never stores or processes criminal justice information. Calls about police or court-records matters are transferred directly to your staff, with no transcript or recording kept. If your needs grow toward CJI, we'll tell you plainly what that requires instead of overpromising. <a href="/government-overview">See exactly what Columa does and doesn’t touch →</a>
No. Olive absorbs the routine, repetitive questions and the after-hours volume so staff spend their time on requests that actually need a person. Anything urgent or sensitive routes straight to your team.
She says so and connects the resident to the right department — by transfer, message, or logged request — instead of guessing. Olive only answers from information your city has approved.
Always. Transfer rules are yours to set — by department, by topic, or by time of day — and a resident who asks for a person gets one.
Government deployments are scoped on a short call, based on your departments, call volume, and channels. Book a demo and we'll put together a proposal you can take to your council or manager.
Columa is built and operated by Olive Group, a U.S.-based agency, and answers real calls for real organizations today. Your deployment is set up and supported by people, not a self-serve portal.
Book a short demo — we'll show Olive handling real resident questions and map out what a deployment looks like for your city.