September 17, 2025 • 47 mins
Summary
In this episode, Parth Shah, CEO of Polimorphic, discusses the transformative role of AI in government communications and public service. He shares insights from his background in civic technology and the challenges faced by public agencies in managing communications, public records, and community engagement. Parth emphasizes the importance of AI in enhancing customer service, addressing misinformation, and improving accessibility for diverse populations. He also highlights the need for governments to adapt to technological advancements to meet rising public expectations and maintain effective service delivery.
Our premiere sponsor, Social News Desk, has an exclusive offer for PIO Podcast listeners. Head over to socialnewsdesk.com/pio to get three months free when a qualifying agency signs up.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
Welcome to the PIO Podcast, a place for all things
public information related, forpolice, fire, EMS, and local
governments.
An open forum to learn, grow,and develop your public
information skills.
I am your host, RobertTornabene.
(00:21):
I am a public informationofficer with over 17 years of
experience in the field and 27years of law enforcement
background.
Weekly, we will delve into thefield of public information by
talking to other PIOs just likeyou.
Thank you for the support of thepodcast.
So sit back and enjoy thisepisode.
Good afternoon today on the PIOpodcast.
I would like to introduce ParthShah.
(00:42):
He's a CEO of Polymorphic.
Parth, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01 (00:47):
I'm excited about this conversation.
SPEAKER_02 (00:49):
Yeah, so am I, Parth.
I'm very excited about it.
You know, I was looking at yourbackground and I want to talk a
little bit about it first off.
So you are the co-founder andthe CEO of Polymorphic, which is
a civic technology company thatleverages artificial
intelligence.
And I have been talking about AIfor quite a while, specifically
(01:10):
in the government field and inpublic communications.
So we're going to talk a lotabout this and what Polymorphic
might be able to help PIOs with.
But I also wanted to go back toyour background a little bit
here.
So you got a bachelor's degreefrom MIT, where you co-founded
another thing called Flux.
What was that?
that about?
SPEAKER_01 (01:31):
Yeah, so while I was on campus, one thing that was
really exciting is a lot offolks there were working on
projects in the side.
And usually, as they werelooking to graduate, you know,
they would start that maybetheir senior year or as they
were in graduate school doingtheir master's engineering.
And what's challenging is whenyou're a full time student, it's
(01:54):
really hard to be able to dokind of all the other pieces
that are needed to make astartup run, right?
All the operations.
work that goes into it and sothat was really the whole idea
was it was kind of anaccelerator is what we called it
but the the real piece was a wayto just help folks as they're
trying to get stuff off theground like if you need to do
(02:16):
market research or create umoftentimes getting the initial
incorporation we we had a folksat the bu law clinic we'd work
with so things like that so itwas a pretty exciting initiative
and a few really excitingcompanies pop out out of that.
SPEAKER_02 (02:33):
Awesome.
So besides starting your owncompany now, but you also worked
as a deep learning softwareengineer at NVIDIA, which my son
loves the video cards that theyproduce.
So awesome.
But you also served as aresearch assistant at Stony
Brook University Lab forComputational Neurodiagnostics.
(02:57):
Holy
SPEAKER_01 (02:57):
cow.
Yeah, that was well before I gotinto the world of engineering.
But it was pretty funexperience.
Basically, a lot of stuff aroundneuroscience and
neurodiagnostics.
As MRIs became more popular todo research and ways to collect
information, the whole idea was,can we run interesting
(03:19):
conversations and experimentsaround that?
And so, yeah, I spent some timethere.
And then, obviously, NVIDIAspent some time on their data
platform team, which was prettycool.
And those are two, I think,really fascinating experiences
in that world.
SPEAKER_02 (03:36):
Well, that's very cool.
And I also saw that just thisyear, you were named New York's
who's who in emerging tech onthe emerging tech list.
So congratulations on that aswell.
SPEAKER_01 (03:47):
Thank you.
Yeah, that one, that one was apleasant surprise.
SPEAKER_02 (03:51):
All right.
So let's talk about polymorphy.
Let's talk about this.
So what inspired you to createthis and, and how does it help
public agencies improve theircommunications?
SPEAKER_01 (04:03):
Great question.
So I'll actually start with theprevious experience before
polymorphic was kind of twofold.
So I spent some time at a asmaller company that was in the
smart city space.
And as part of that, I got agreat chance to interact with
some cities, including a lot ofones in the greater Boston area
(04:26):
while I was living there.
And the whole idea around smartcities was, can we use data and
analytics to really build safer,more vibrant cities?
Really exciting initiativescontinue to this day.
But as I spent time with a lotof the government there, what
was really...
kind of immediately clear thatthe biggest challenge was
(04:48):
around, in a broad sense,communications and customer
service, right?
That's the piece that a lot offolks who are not in the world
of government don't reallyunderstand, which is government
might be the most complicatedcustomer service organization in
the world, frankly.
You take even the smallest cityand they're running 15 different
departments, right?
So when people, I've been atthis conference this week, it's
(05:09):
been great, but as people havementioned, oh, you know,
sometimes people ask us how dowe run it like a business and
what they're thinking is a smallbusiness right the local
laundromat or something likethat but the city's got
utilities and public works andyou know planning and zoning and
(05:29):
they're completely differentthey don't even have very
similar operations but the thingthat ties it all together is
customer service so what I hadseen was how challenging it was
to do customer service right soa lot of and this is the part of
our world that we're reallyfocused on the communications
PIO side and I'll get to that.
But what I was seeing was 50% ofthe time front desk was spending
(05:53):
was on repeat questions thatwere calls that people were
making because they couldn'tfind content on the website.
Another 25% of time was juststatus requests, right?
I had called earlier and I justwant to know where in the
process I am now.
And then you go on the insideand a lot of the, even if
certain stuff is digitizedinternally, a lot of it's very
manual.
(06:13):
And so I think about this idea alot and there's this really
tweet and I'm not I don't spenda ton of time on tour but
there's this there's this tweetthat came out that said hey I
want AI to do my laundry anddishes so I can do art and
writing and and that reallyresonated with me because I
really I think that was I wasthinking from the government
lens which is if we're acustomer service organization
(06:34):
right most cities counties stateagencies most time is being
spent on laundry and dishesright now it's the laundry and
dishes of customer service andso One of the leads with
Polymorphic is we do some reallyexciting stuff for an AI.
We call it an AI concierge,which is, it's a chatbot for the
website.
We also have an AI search.
We have it on the phone system,so it can answer calls in 28
(06:56):
different languages.
Instead of the phone trees,it'll actually route to your
department.
So happy to kind of dive in morethere.
But we also have an email, SMS,so every way your residents can
reach out to you and havequestions.
It acts as that conciergeexperience has your website
content, your codes.
It's similar to what people areused to with ChatGPT right now,
except it's controlled content.
(07:17):
So it's only your content andit's much easier to manage that
way.
SPEAKER_02 (07:21):
So Parth, are you still seeing...
So websites for governmentagencies are horrendous.
And I used to manage one when Iwas still working for
government.
And
SPEAKER_00 (07:34):
I'll tell you,
SPEAKER_02 (07:35):
trying to get information updated on there is
like getting an act of God.
At the same time, you want totry and give information to the
public but you can't get theaccurate information in the
system so how how doespolymorphic handle that are you
guys getting access to all theirsystems and then you're it just
(07:57):
finds it and then pulls it in
SPEAKER_01 (08:00):
yeah i mean that's that's the big idea we really
want to make the process easyfor for a lot of communications
and pio um departments becauseyou know you're updating the
website and if i have to uploadevery piece of content into also
the AI that's too difficult.
So basically our approach iswe'll automatically run through
the website, the code, all thosesources.
(08:22):
What's neat though too is whatwe'll do with a lot of our
customers is they actually usethe tool to do an audit of their
content because it's so mucheasier to ask, hey, here are the
common questions we get fromconstituents.
So we have this funny storywhere a village in Wisconsin we
work with, they were asking someof their common questions and
one of their questions was whois the police chief, right?
(08:44):
And I came up with the oldpolice chief, which was the
police chief from, you know,two, three years ago.
And the first instinct was,okay, you know, maybe the AI is
wrong.
I don't know.
And then they click through thesources, right?
Because our chatbot, our voice,you know, it's got all the
sources behind and you get afull log.
So it gives a full audit trail,which is great.
It clicked through the sources.
(09:06):
And lo and behold, they hadn'tupdated their police department
page in like three years.
And so that's kind of the thingthat I mean, obviously, that's a
more benign example, becausemore personnel, but you can
think about people are going toyour site already.
And I think it's really hard tofloat up what content might be
off.
So in many ways, we started tosee it used as a tool actually,
(09:29):
right internal staff to figureout, hey, for key questions
we're getting, you know, where'sour content up to date, and
we're actually working onpotentially a really neat tool
soon, which will probablyprovide free of charge or
something like that to cities iskind of a website checker.
Where is your websiteconflicting to kind of do a
readiness for using our AIchatbots and voice even more
(09:52):
effectively?
SPEAKER_02 (09:54):
So as an end user, as a front user and a back user,
I've handled them both ways.
So it's interesting.
So when I look at the thingsthat people would come in and I
did the FAQ thing many years agobecause FAQs I thought were very
helpful.
The problem is it's only, an FAQis only as good as a query that
(10:15):
the person puts in.
So if they can't figure out whatthey're trying to get to, they
can't find it.
So AI has definitely made life alittle easier because it at
least, give what is probably theclosest answer as opposed to
what we might come up with onour own.
But what I've also found is thatinformation that the agencies
(10:37):
have on their websites, like yousaid, the chief of police in one
agency, I still see threeagencies I go back checking,
they still have the place cardwith the chief's message and
it's from 10 years ago.
And it's just a holding card Nopicture, no email address, no
(10:58):
ability to contact anybody.
So as I see this, and I knowagencies struggle with this,
they want everybody to come backto their website, but their
website just doesn't have theoomph that it needs to do or
handle the bandwidth too.
SPEAKER_01 (11:12):
And so, I mean, there's two pieces of that that
we really get keyed in on.
So the first part I think youmentioned is great, right?
So you've gone through the wholeprocess here and added FAQs as a
way to make it more...
just easier for the commonquestions folks ask, but I'll
give you a simple example of whyAI becomes so valuable, right?
A lot of folks will like putcommon questions about the code
(11:34):
and they'll say, Hey, if youhave a short-term rental, like
here's the guidance, right?
The problem is most people mightnot know the term short-term
rental, right?
They might say, I have a Vrbo orI have an Airbnb.
What do I do, right?
And so the neat thing about AIversus these search tools, the
search or legacy chatbots thatused to be more keyword-oriented
(11:56):
where you had to program everyresponse in is what AI is doing
is it's not just saying, here,give me your content.
I'm going to understand themeaning of it.
And I'm also going to understandthe meaning of the question,
right?
So I know Airbnb is short-termrental.
I know Vrbo is short-termrental.
Your code's going to referenceit not as Airbnb or Vrbo.
They're going to say short-termrentals, right?
(12:17):
And so that's part one, right?
That's where AI, like moreconcretely, the reason I love
that example is it's just such acommon, everyone has run into
that, but it's government speakis very different from the way
your residents think, right?
They don't even think indepartments, right?
SPEAKER_02 (12:31):
Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (12:32):
So that's a whole other thing on phones.
SPEAKER_02 (12:35):
Absolutely.
And that's another thing.
You brought this up earlier.
You talked about they don't knowwhere they're at in the queue.
They don't know.
They've not gotten any updates.
And what I've seen in lawenforcement agencies that used
to government, because I wasinvolved in both aspects, people
change.
They leave positions.
They leave suddenly or they'reout on a medical and it's
(12:56):
sitting on somebody's desk.
You know, where's my...
FOIA was the one that was themost important one for PIOs.
And if a FOIA case got dropped,you could end up in some
sanctions for from the districtattorney's office because you
failed to meet the burden oftime limits.
Let's talk about that.
(13:17):
How does that
SPEAKER_01 (13:17):
help?
Yeah, no, that's a greatquestion.
So that's the second side of oursystem, right?
So we've got the AI conciergeand the AI concierge starts to
funnel into what we call likeour constituent relationship
management, but it's really likea customer service platform,
right?
So you can submit stuff online,track it online and give staff
tools.
So one of the counties in NorthCarolina we work with, this is
(13:37):
Exact Challenge.
public records request is thebig use case your communications
department has.
That's a great point on, one,the requirements.
There's time limits by which youneed to get back.
Oftentimes, people just file theextension right away because
they just know that it's goingto be so long to get back when
it's handled manually.
(13:59):
The other piece I'll even pointout is the coordinating with
other departments.
This is a larger county wherethey have 30 departments.
So the public records requestsmight come in through
communications, butcommunications and the PIO need
to coordinate with all theseother different departments on
depending on the request whereto get the information from.
(14:20):
And so that's actuallynon-trivial.
How does that happen right now?
Mostly email, right?
You forward an email and there'sno due date on emails, right?
Conceptually, there's no duedate on emails, but your FOIA
request has a deadline.
So what we have there, which ispretty great, it's an online
service.
a mission, but there's also away to build out those internal
(14:40):
workflows on the back end.
So this county, basically, thecommunications office, you know,
someone asks, how do I do apublic records request?
The AI answers it, it pointsthem to that online form they're
using polymorphic for.
They fill it out, all therequests, and it goes to
communications.
The great thing is they have, ifsomeone's out of the office, no
problem, because it's done at adepartment level.
(15:02):
So it gets assigned to multiplefolks with a due date, so it'll
bump someone else, it can getescalated automatically, and
then they'll say, okay, I need,you know, public works, solid
waste, and the sheriff on thisone, right?
And they can assign it to threedifferent departments.
It's all organized in aninternal kind of case management
(15:23):
view right so it's all organizedin one place they can keep track
of they can send emails from ittoo so if they want to do emails
they can do that but they canhave tasks so they can assign a
task saying hey sheriff i needthese documents back in you know
we have 20 days to fulfill youhave 15 days to do that so it
organizes everything and thenthey can look back you know you
go back two years and say heyyou know we got this kind of
(15:45):
request what how do we fulfillit and so you have that full
history as well um and so that'sbeen great i mean i think
leadership's loved it toobecause they can and see where
the bottlenecks are in theprocess too.
Because it does automaticanalytics on, hey,
communications is doingeverything in two days, but our
departments are taking three,four days to get back.
And suddenly that has a lot ofvalue as well.
SPEAKER_02 (16:07):
Yeah, absolutely.
I can definitely see that.
And I, and I've known this fromearly on when I started my
career, we, I handled FOIA,everything was manually do an
email, you sent an email, um,and, and you're waiting for the
person to get back to you.
Then you, you know, you hope youget the record in time and then
how do you deliver the record?
So I'm assuming polymorphichelps get the record digitally
(16:28):
to somebody as well.
SPEAKER_01 (16:29):
That's right.
That's right.
So you can submit it backdigitally.
If you're on an email, you cando that as well.
But you know, we've got the fullworkflow online.
so I can, you know, get them thestatus, they can download the
documentation all there.
So, this makes that wholeprocess seamless for public
records requests and it's ageneral workflow tool.
So that's a neat thing, right?
It doesn't, it's not justlimited to public records
(16:49):
requests, but a lot of folks useit that way and then other
departments are also usingpolymorphic in human services
and other places and so it makesit easier too for those
departments because they'refamiliar with polymorphic
software for other stuff they doso it also makes them faster at
responding to those publicrecords requests that are coming
from human
SPEAKER_02 (17:06):
And now a word from our sponsors.
SPEAKER_00 (17:14):
Ensure compliance and safeguard your organization
with S&D Archive, the leadingsocial archiving solution from
Social News Desk.
With easy retrieval and export,compliance alerts, and automatic
retention for all majorplatforms, including Nextdoor,
S&D Archive helps you stay aheadof risks and maintain complete
records with confidence.
(17:35):
And here's an exclusive offerjust for PIO podcast listeners.
Get three months free when yousign up.
Head over to socialnewsdesk.comslash PIO And
SPEAKER_02 (17:45):
now, back to the show.
Right.
All right, so I'm going to geekout on a different level here
for you, Parth.
Roads are big things for people,roads and maintenance and things
like that.
And, you know, they'll drivedown the road one day and all of
a sudden they've got a truck outthere and they're digging up the
road because a water main broke.
(18:06):
And, you know, and it happens.
There's one road I know whereabout every couple weeks a water
main breaks and it just keepsmoving down the road.
And I'm thinking at some point,is somebody going to say we need
to replace that whole pipe allthe way down instead of keep
doing the sectioning and payingthe overtime?
So I would assume polymorphiccould also work within a
(18:28):
department like their publicworks department and, and track
how old, a sewer pipe is andwhen it's expected to fail.
The expectation time of afailure.
SPEAKER_01 (18:40):
That piece is probably more on the asset
management side, but what we doon that side, which is pretty
neat, is let's say you want toreport an issue like that, or
they want to track the processby which they fix it.
For public works, potholes,broken pipes, street signs down,
street lights not working.
(19:02):
Those are all common use caseswhere, hey, I see it.
How do I, how do I report it?
And so people can do that inpolymorphic.
What's neat about the water mainbreak, which is actually funny.
And this is a toolcommunications folks love
because I remember at the behindthe scenes were for staff or a
CRM for the public where I AIconcierge online submission,
right?
Uh, Behind the scenes, becausewe're starting to also collect
(19:25):
with every interaction, hey, youknow, someone submitted this,
this is a request.
The water main break is a funnyexample because communicating
that normally is difficult,right?
Because it's a geographic fenceI want to communicate it, right?
Not everyone needs to know aboutthe water main break.
It's just the piece of thestreet that's affected.
And so what's neat is as youstart to build up that CRM
(19:47):
contact book, we have thisfeature where you can actually
draw a map They'll pull down thecontacts and you can send a mass
email to them saying, hey, thewater main broke.
We're working on fixing itwithout having to send an email
to everyone.
And while also being able torespond to that with the mass
communication.
SPEAKER_02 (20:07):
That's definitely a nice feature to have that
ability.
And I would think that in acrisis communication respect,
that would be valuable as wellfor public safety, law
enforcement, fire department,EMS.
SPEAKER_01 (20:21):
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (20:22):
Parth, let's talk about data, AI and public
messaging.
Misinformation is a big issuefor PIOs and, you know, getting
to it to try and dispel itquickly is really important,
especially on social media.
Can polymorphic help agenciesdetect and counter it in any
way?
Does it have a tool for that?
SPEAKER_01 (20:40):
So we don't have a tool on like the detect side
necessarily.
I mean, that's a good idea.
It might be something that wecould help out with.
We might need to think aboutthat.
So I'll go back to myengineering team with that.
But one thing that is, you know,great is, we talked about kind
of the AI concierge piece,right?
And I mentioned there's achatbot on the website, on the
phone system.
(21:00):
Social media is another big wayfolks reach out.
And one thing that we do isbecause we're open API, we can
integrate into the social mediapiece there.
So if people are sending, youknow, messages to your page or,
you know, DMs to your Twitterabout, hey, you know, I saw
this, you know, is this real orwhatever?
You can leverage that AI, whichis online, that controlled
(21:23):
content, right?
And it can provide that firstresponse.
So that's something that we'revery excited about.
I think misinformation is a hugechallenge for communications
departments.
There's going to be many piecesof that battle to fight.
I'll give another example that'snot on the social media side,
but you see all these...
you know, Google search isrolling out that AI assist,
(21:47):
right?
And we work with the surrogatecourt in New Jersey and they're
saying, well, the Google answeron like how I probate a will is
wrong.
And I said, why is that?
And they said, well, they'repulling from sources that are
not just the government.
Like it depends, right?
In different counties, the rulesare different.
In different states, the rulesare different.
(22:08):
So that's a challenge from amisinformation standpoint.
So that's what motivated them todo the chatbot, the AI search
because they're like, this isour branded, controlled content
AI answer.
SPEAKER_02 (22:19):
That's understandable.
Parth, agencies often strugglewith accessibility and language
barriers.
How does polymorphic, I know yousaid something about language
that can respond back, how doesit communicate across the
different languages and, ofcourse, accessibility issues as
well?
SPEAKER_01 (22:37):
I'll answer those in two parts because they're
related.
I think there's differentelements to both.
The language piece, We support75 different languages.
We're adding more every day onthe chatbot.
It's been incredible.
I've seen folks have...
Our customers have told us theyhad full conversations with
languages that previously theydidn't have anyone on staff who
(23:00):
could actually speak those.
So there's a county we work withwhere they have...
Most staff has English and somefolks know Spanish.
They have a huge Bengalipopulation.
So So if you're Bengali andtrying to get services in this
community, to no fault of thecounty, it's just difficult,
right?
None of the staff knows how tospeak that.
(23:23):
They rolled out this AI and allof a sudden, there's just people
asking questions in Bengali.
We saw this full conversationsomeone had about, and it
started very generic, right?
So there's like the surrogatecourt, which handles wills of
states, things like that.
And they opened with a supergeneric question of like, hey,
you know, a loved one justpassed away, what do I do?
And it walked the through thewhole process like, hey, do you
(23:45):
have a will or not?
It was an incredible example,honestly.
And for that county, it was,hey, we're opening up service to
so many new residents that wedidn't even know weren't able to
access our services because ofthat language barrier.
So that's part one.
The accessibility piece goeseven beyond that.
(24:08):
We work with a lot ofcommunities in Colorado.
Colorado, obviously, they pulledforward the ADA accessibility
mandates forward.
It was supposed to be last year.
I think they got an extension alittle bit on it.
It was really interesting to seethe challenge a lot of them were
(24:30):
facing with content becausePDFs, I think, are the number
one culprit around accessibilityright so you have the choice
between could i remediate do iremediate my pdfs which frankly
is very expensive right it isthe cost per page is almost
prohibitive if you're a smallercity if you're a larger
organization you just have toomany pdfs so at regardless of
(24:51):
what scale you are remediatingpdfs is difficult so they're
faced between the choice ofarchiving them right um or
taking them down in a lot ofcases and there's a lot of
valuable information in therethat you know residents and
businesses and want to ask andlearn about.
Or they keep it up and risklawsuits and noncompliance.
(25:12):
And so you're caught between arock and a hard place in the
most literal definition.
What we did with Castle Pines isamazing.
We put out a case study on it.
They've been an amazing teamthere, really innovative in
Colorado.
They actually use the AI.
And beyond website and codesources, you can upload internal
knowledge base, PDF, that kindof stuff.
(25:33):
And so they uploaded theirdocuments.
and then took them down from thewebsite.
But what they told the publicis, you can ask questions, and
we'll still pull the contentfrom there.
So we're not taking down anyinformation.
So you interact with thechatbot, AI search, we'll still
answer questions based on thosePDFs.
But now it's actuallyaccessible.
And so our chatbot and search isobviously, you know, WCAG level,
(25:57):
AA compliant.
And And so that was a greatexample of actually we hadn't
even thought about that.
We worked with PDFs becausethat's just another big content
piece that the chatbots andsearch and AI voice systems need
to pull from.
They actually did something veryclever where they actually used
it to make sure that they couldprovide the answers and get
(26:19):
compliant in that process.
So we're part of the equation.
I'm not saying we're the magicbullet for, hey, you sign up
with Polymorphic, you're ADAcompliant.
But with the website contentpiece, That is a big challenge,
right?
Am I going to take down a ton ofinformation that's very valuable
or do I keep it up and risknoncompliance?
And we're helping a lot of folksin Colorado and other states do
(26:41):
that.
SPEAKER_02 (26:42):
Let's talk about what polymorphic the agencies
you can work with.
Small to how large?
What can you guys work with?
SPEAKER_01 (26:49):
So, yeah, we work a pretty wide range.
Our largest, we have stateagencies.
We have counties that aremillions of residents.
So some really, really largeorganizations.
But we've done a prettyconscious effort to work with
small and mid-sizedorganizations as well.
So I would say our sweet spot is20 or 10 to 20,000 residents and
(27:14):
higher.
But that's not to say one of ourbest customers, we just did a
great customer video.
Tangent Oregon is 1300residents.
And we really care about makingsure our technology is also
accessible to smaller cities.
It's a different challenge,right?
In their case, they had threefull-time employees, right?
And one was retiring.
(27:35):
So you think about theinstitutional knowledge that's
disappearing.
They're about to lose 33% oftheir institutional knowledge.
And so that's where we're reallyexcited about AI and customer
services.
We really believe it's a forcemultiplier.
It's an investment in yourexisting staff.
Right now, hiring is sodifficult in government.
I think I started the numbers.
(27:56):
It's like 52% of local and stateemployees are thinking in the
next five to 10 years, they'regoing to retire.
And that is a shocking futurereality to deal with.
So how are we going to providethe existing level service, I
would argue better servicebecause constituents are
(28:17):
demanding more and more.
They're used to Amazon gives mepackage tracking, Domino's gives
me SaaS tracking.
I can chat 24-7 in 75 languages.
I want that with my government.
The demands are rising and Imight have half the staff to do
that in 5-10 years.
The refill rate is just nothappening.
(28:39):
That is what we're reallypassionate about.
We want to make sure governmentsare prepared.
we want governments to be knownas the best customer service
organizations out there.
Our, our internal vision andmotto we say is I want, you
know, a lot of day, a lot ofright now people, we, we opened
this conversation with peoplesay, Oh, I want to run like a
business.
And I don't want to flip that onhis head.
(28:59):
I want people to be going totheir, you know, local car
dealer or laundromat and say,Hey, why, why can't you run like
the city?
Why can't you run like thecounty?
Cause they're using all thisinnovative technology and the
customer service is so great.
And so long way of saying, um,Thank you.
It's a big challenge.
And I think that's somethingthat staffing is going to be a
(29:20):
really, really big piece of it.
SPEAKER_02 (29:22):
Have you, have you seen in the, in your experience
with pitching this togovernment, the, the governments
that are they coming to you?
Are you guys going out there andthrowing it out to them and
saying, Hey, this, this might bebeneficial to you, but where do
you see where you, I should say,where do you see you run into
the, the wall with localgovernment?
SPEAKER_01 (29:42):
So I think, I think it were AI is AI was new.
So the, this has changed alittle bit over the last year,
right?
We've become, I would say, andthis is all a shout out to our
engineering team and our clientsuccess team, like they've
really built probably the mostwell-tailored AI product for
customer service and government,right?
They've done a fantastic jobworking with our customers
there.
(30:03):
So a lot of it is more aroundactually education, right?
When it's something new forgovernments, a lot of folks
don't realize how AI could helpsome of the problems they're
facing, right?
Right now, if you asked everycity manager, every county
manager, even communicationsdepartment, what's your number
one problem?
What keeps you up at night?
It's staffing, right?
(30:23):
It's really hard to hire.
How do we provide services?
That doesn't mean necessarilyyou're thinking about the
solution, right?
Everyone thinks in the problem.
And our job is to communicatehow we can help with those
problems, right?
Staffing shortages, departmentsilos, resident frustration,
increase in expectations ofcustomer service and that demand
coming from the population.
(30:45):
So in states now where we'vestarted to see you know a lot of
counties hop on like New Jerseywe're at we cover a third of the
state already North Carolinawill be at 25% of the residents
will be covered by polymorphicservices over 30 million
Americans are covered bygovernments using polymorphic so
we've got you know a lot offolks using us and people are
saying hey I want that butthat's a big part of it right is
(31:09):
us getting the message out Ithink where we run into
resistance a lot of times folksthey sometimes think of AIA as a
replacement, or they think of AIas...
And this idea of like, oh, it'snot a person, right?
And I kind of challenge folks tothink about it differently,
actually, which is that exampleI mentioned earlier with the
(31:31):
multi-language.
That's a new outcome and a newconstituency they're able to
serve.
It's not about replacing, it'sabout value add, right?
When we talked about the AI, Iwant to do the laundry and
dishes.
I think that people realizethis, especially city managers
I've talked to, Take front deskroles.
The turnover is usually in ayear.
(31:52):
The folks are handling the phonecalls, right?
Either they get promoted or theyget frustrated.
And I think we had to askourselves, hey, if you're
answering the same questionsover and over again, is that a
fun and exciting job that we aredoing in government?
No, it's not.
And so I think we need to thinkabout the employee experience,
(32:13):
right?
The staff experience.
If we are having a hard timehiring, we're having a hard time
retaining, people, government'sgot an amazing mission, right?
I think right now, younger folkstoo are really excited about
mission, right?
That's something that matters tothem.
Local government, stategovernment is probably the most
impactful organization in ourlives.
I would argue that, okay?
But the experience internallydoesn't match up if I'm spending
(32:35):
all my time answering repeatquestions on the phone.
If I'm spending time on the penand paper, we're taking stuff on
email and trying to forwardthese 50 email long forwarding
chains to fulfill a publicrecords request.
So that's our job, right?
It's the education piece.
But I think that's where we seesome resistance, right?
Where folks are just, they don'tknow, right?
(32:57):
They hear AI as a buzzword.
They're like, what does it meanfor my government?
What can I do there?
And so that's the gap that we'retrying to break.
SPEAKER_02 (33:03):
And I know it's tough.
And I've seen this with, just inthe public sector, public
information officers with theuse of AI, not realizing there's
benefits to it.
And again, it's about 50-50right now.
Some people are like, no, Idon't want to use it.
I don't think it's good.
It's not of value to me.
And the reality of it is thereis value in it if you open your
mind up and think about what itcan help you do.
(33:25):
Because for me, as a PIO, I wantto be able to do as many things
as I possibly can.
And without that ability,without having ChatGPT to help
me solve some minor tasks orsolve problems or give me
direction when I'm looking forlike an angle on a story and I'm
trying to make sure I coveredall the bases, but I'm not sure.
(33:48):
And I ask AI to analyze it andthey say, oh yeah, you missed
this and this.
That just saved me like a weekof trying to figure it out, if
not more.
And I think AI, one of thethings that government needs to
realize is AI is there.
It makes everything feel faster.
It makes everything moreefficient.
(34:10):
And it lets you focus on thepiece.
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01 (34:12):
100%.
It makes everything faster.
I think that's a great point.
And the thing I ask a lot offolks, I hear that.
And the other thing I hear is,oh, let's wait, right?
Like, let's wait to figure outon AI what to do.
And what I tell people inresponse is in three years, or
two years, even using chatbotsand AI on the phone will be the
(34:33):
common way most people interactand interface with the private
sector and a lot of governmentsso so the question is if that's
inevitable right what what's thewait for right uh and so that's
that's why i tell folks rightobviously we're in that space um
we're not saying it has to bewith us but i my point is you
really got to take it seriouslybecause you don't want to fall
(34:55):
behind right and and i thinkwith any new innovation
governments are generally hey wedon't want to be first now with
you know a lot of stuff we'redoing a lot of people have
already done it right we'retalking about 200 departments 30
million Americans are covered bythis.
Um, they're used to thisexperience.
What you, what you don't want tobe is last, right?
And I think that's a big concernfor councils and city managers
(35:16):
because that's where yourresidents get really
frustrating, right?
They see the neighbors and say,Hey, the experience right there
is so good.
And the problem with city andcounties is you kind of have a
monopoly on, on your residents.
So it's really important toprovide great service because
otherwise they'll getfrustrated, right?
Cause they don't have as muchease and Hey, I can just get up
and leave.
And so, um, And that's why I'mso passionate about customer
(35:39):
service.
And I think a lot of ourgovernments are too.
SPEAKER_02 (35:42):
And I agree.
And so if somebody, if somebodywants to reach out to you guys
and learn more about what you door how you do it, and I'll, I'll
let you throw their pitch out atthe very end when we're done,
but what's it?
And no, no, I honestly, Ibelieve it.
I look at your product and I'mlike, this is what a lot of
governments need.
(36:02):
They really do.
And like you said, the, the,being last is the worst thing in
the world for local governmentnow you need to be an innovator
and this is an innovative pieceof technology and we it needs to
be promoted out there it needsto be pushed so I believe me I'm
100% behind you on this but ifsomebody wants to reach out and
connect with somebody atpolymorphic what do they got to
(36:26):
do
SPEAKER_01 (36:26):
well it's super easy so the website's a great place
to go it'sp-o-l-i-m-o-r-p-h-i-c.com you go
there, there's a button at thetop, big blue button, request a
demo, right?
And we'll ask for what regionyou're in.
What's great is we got anamazing team covering kind of
the different regions.
So they got experience with yourneighbors, folks who've had
(36:49):
similar challenges.
So we talked about like CastlePines in Colorado.
We just brought on another onein Colorado, Littleton, great
team there.
So if you're in Colorado, youget someone who's actually
worked with Coloradomunicipalities.
Kate on our team is fantastic.
She'll walk you through that.
So reach out to that way.
We'll get you in front of theright folks.
You can email me directly, too,if you want.
(37:12):
If you just want to talk AI, I'malways happy to.
I really like to make myselfaccessible.
My email is just my first name,parth, P-A-R-T-H, at
polymorphic.com.
Those are the two best ways toreach out.
We're on LinkedIn.
I think the website's a greatplace.
If it's just, hey, I want tolearn more about AI.
SPEAKER_02 (37:32):
I'll add those into the show note, and I'll make
sure that they pop up when we dothe video and stuff.
So definitely want to promotethat.
So Parth, let's switch this up.
Before we go into rapid fire,I'm going to ask you this.
Is there a question I shouldhave asked?
And if so, how would you haveanswered?
SPEAKER_01 (37:47):
Oh, that's a good question.
I think the questions youcovered were fantastic.
The one that I just like tobring attention to is around,
you know, we've been talking alot about technology and AI.
And the one I think it's good toask is just how hard is it to
get set up, right?
So even if it's great, we'retalking about everyone's going
(38:08):
to do it, what's the effort ittakes to get this set up?
Because people are used to, whenyou think technology
implementations, they think ERP.
They think the finance systemERP, it's like a two-year
project, huge headache, it'ssuper difficult.
We've really thought about thatexperience a lot because of
that.
I think people are often, a lotof the reason people are
(38:32):
hesitant on new technology isjust they're so scarred by these
old legacy technology where ittook forever to implement and it
was super painful.
So what's really neat is we madethat really easy.
Like we were talking about thewebsite integrations and all
that.
So we've done the heavy liftingon our side.
people go live within two tothree calls with our team and so
(38:55):
we're talking a total investmentof three to four hours max for
the the chatbot on the site umwhich is you know i highlight
that because it's just sodifferent from other
technologies so i i really saywhen obviously the crm and the
workflow piece that's moreinvolved we sit down with the
team and you know really holdfolks hands to like figure out
(39:15):
what the workflow is the processbut for getting started with ai
it is easy.
It doesn't need to be difficult.
We've really invested a lot oftime in making it as easy as
possible.
We care about the product.
We also care about theexperience of just getting to
use the product.
We think of that as part of theproduct experience, as part of
the user experience.
(39:36):
So
SPEAKER_02 (39:38):
I can't believe two to three weeks.
I mean, that's amazing because Ilook at like, I saw something on
Doja's website the other day andI'm not dealing with politics,
but I'm thinking about, theywere doing an overall of, I
think it was the IRS system.
And Something like$11 billion in15 years and nothing's been
(40:04):
produced.
And I'm thinking, really?
I mean, that's horrible.
And nobody wants to say, okay,it's going to take two years to
implement new technology becauseyou know this from your
background.
Two years technology, that'sfive, six generations
SPEAKER_01 (40:20):
gone.
Right, right.
Like you're always playing catchup then.
If it's going to take years toimplement, it's like, oh, we're
already late again.
We're back to implementing.
Yeah, implementation speedmatters for that reason.
I don't think that's somethingpeople talk a lot about in
government technology.
If it's going to take two years,you're probably not going to be
getting the most moderntechnology.
It's going to be a pain toupgrade.
(40:41):
It should feel natural.
New updates come out.
It should be coming outconstantly.
SPEAKER_02 (40:47):
Right, absolutely.
All right, let's switch this up.
Rapid fire questions.
You ready?
All right, texting or talking?
SPEAKER_01 (40:54):
Talking.
SPEAKER_02 (40:57):
Movies or books?
SPEAKER_01 (40:59):
Books.
SPEAKER_02 (41:01):
Coffee, tea, or energy drink?
Tea.
Cats or dogs?
Dogs.
Favorite go-to karaoke song?
SPEAKER_01 (41:13):
That's a tough one.
Let's go party in the USA.
All
SPEAKER_02 (41:20):
right.
If you could have a superpower,what would it be?
SPEAKER_01 (41:25):
I feel like time travel would be amazing.
SPEAKER_02 (41:30):
If you could instantly become an expert in
one thing, what would it be?
I
SPEAKER_01 (41:34):
would love to learn more about physics and
especially all the crazy stuffthat's going on in particle
physics.
That would be a really coolarea.
SPEAKER_02 (41:44):
Ask permission or beg for forgiveness?
SPEAKER_01 (41:53):
Beg for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02 (41:57):
What place do you most
SPEAKER_01 (41:57):
want to travel
SPEAKER_02 (41:58):
to?
I
SPEAKER_01 (41:59):
feel like Japan's on the list.
I've heard great things about...
I think there's like thisfive-day hiking thing you can do
in the southern part of Chilethat I've heard.
And I've really wanted to dothat with my brother.
So that's another one on thelist.
SPEAKER_02 (42:15):
Okay.
Yeah.
Uh, what is that?
Puka?
Um, I know.
All right.
Uh, favorite way to relax aftera long day, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (42:24):
Favorite way to relax after a long day.
SPEAKER_02 (42:26):
What's your favorite way to relax?
Yes.
What's your favorite way?
SPEAKER_01 (42:30):
I love cooking.
So I'm a big fan of, you know,making, you know, sitting down
and making a nice meal.
Um, I also like to write in myfree time.
So that's something I'll oftendo.
Um, those are, those are two upthere.
SPEAKER_02 (42:46):
If you could sit down and have tea with any
historical figure living ordead, who would it be?
SPEAKER_01 (42:52):
Oh, that is a good one.
I would go really far back, andI would probably go to Egyptian
times, because the thing thatshocks me is the start of their
civilization to the end ofEgyptian dynasties is actually
longer than from the end totoday.
So I would be super curious tojust hear in the middle, how did
(43:16):
they maintain the dynasties andcivilizations for that long?
I think it's so fascinating.
SPEAKER_02 (43:23):
Oh, yeah.
There's some technology that waslost somewhere.
Oh, I agree.
Don't get me, I'll go conspiracytheory on that one for you.
All right, some final thoughts.
What key points would you likeour listeners to take from
today's interview?
SPEAKER_01 (43:38):
Yeah, I mean, I think the first one is, look, AI
is not something to be scaredof.
It's something that can bereally, really valuable for your
constituents.
Remember, you know, we talkabout this with everyone.
Customer service is our numberone job and it really can make a
difference there.
I think right now we're, we gotthis hiring challenges already.
I think that's only going to getworse.
(43:58):
And so the question is, preparetoday to make sure we're
providing the best customerservice we can for the future
for our residents and ourbusinesses and our visitors in a
world where we might have lessand less resources to do that.
It doesn't have to be hard.
It doesn't have to be a scarything, but find the right
partner.
And there's a lot of folksalready doing it.
(44:22):
So it's not jumping in first.
So I'd say now is the time to besecond and don't be last.
SPEAKER_02 (44:32):
As we wrap this up, is there a motto or a piece of
wisdom that you live by?
SPEAKER_01 (44:36):
Yeah, the one I live by, I live by two.
So the first one is more atechnical one.
It's move the mean of standarddeviation.
So I think about that in a lotof stuff we do is, hey, I don't
really believe inincrementalism, right?
Like there's a lot of smallpieces that matter.
But when we think about thestuff we do, we really want to
(44:58):
improve outcomes by a meaningfulchange where people can see that
and feel that difference.
But the one I live by personallya lot is the strength within you
is greater than the task aheadof you.
That's a big one I live by.
Okay.
Outstanding.
SPEAKER_02 (45:14):
All right, Parth, here's your chance again.
Let's talk about how people canreach out and connect with
Polymorphic.
SPEAKER_01 (45:20):
Yeah, absolutely.
So Polymorphic, once again, wedo AI and CRM and workflows with
our AI concierge.
We have the chatbot, the searchon the phone system.
That one's great.
So if you have phone trees andthings like that, a lot of time
savings, 24-7, multiplelanguages.
And then we have a great kind ofCRM workflow tool if you're
(45:41):
struggling with paper-basedprocesses Reach out.
We're always excited for just aconversation, too.
It might not be the timing now.
It might not be you're justinterested in AI.
But the best way to reach out,go to our website,
polymorphic.com.
That'sP-O-L-I-M-O-R-P-H-I-C.com.
Google sometimes will change itto a Y, but it's P-O-L-I.
(46:04):
My email is parth atpolymorphic.com, so feel free to
email me as well directly.
I love to hear from all thelocal government leaders.
But definitely check out thesite.
If you're interested, request ademo.
It doesn't have to be a highcommitment thing.
I would say the demo is free,right?
So meet our team.
They're great folks.
They'd love to chat more andlearn and looking forward to
(46:25):
hearing from folks.
SPEAKER_02 (46:26):
And I'll add all that into the show notes.
Perfect.
Parth, thank you very much forbeing on the show.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_01 (46:30):
Appreciate
SPEAKER_02 (46:30):
it.
I hope you enjoyed this episodeand our content.
If you are listening on aplatform that allows reviews,
please give us a review.
We read all reviews and yourfeedback is essential.
Do not forget to check out oursponsor social news desk thank
you social news desk for theirsponsorship and their offer to
all our listeners please clickthe link at the bottom of
(46:54):
today's show notes to helpsupport the show your support in
any amount is greatlyappreciated until next time take
care stay curious and keep theconversation going you're the
heart and soul of the piopodcast
Welcome to the PIO Podcast, a place for all things
public information related, forpolice, fire, EMS, and local
governments.
An open forum to learn, grow,and develop your public
information skills.
I am your host, RobertTornabene.
(00:21):
I am a public informationofficer with over 17 years of
experience in the field and 27years of law enforcement
background.
Weekly, we will delve into thefield of public information by
talking to other PIOs just likeyou.
Thank you for the support of thepodcast.
So sit back and enjoy thisepisode.
Good afternoon today on the PIOpodcast.
I would like to introduce ParthShah.
(00:42):
He's a CEO of Polymorphic.
Parth, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01 (00:47):
I'm excited about this conversation.
SPEAKER_02 (00:49):
Yeah, so am I, Parth.
I'm very excited about it.
You know, I was looking at yourbackground and I want to talk a
little bit about it first off.
So you are the co-founder andthe CEO of Polymorphic, which is
a civic technology company thatleverages artificial
intelligence.
And I have been talking about AIfor quite a while, specifically
(01:10):
in the government field and inpublic communications.
So we're going to talk a lotabout this and what Polymorphic
might be able to help PIOs with.
But I also wanted to go back toyour background a little bit
here.
So you got a bachelor's degreefrom MIT, where you co-founded
another thing called Flux.
What was that?
that about?
SPEAKER_01 (01:31):
Yeah, so while I was on campus, one thing that was
really exciting is a lot offolks there were working on
projects in the side.
And usually, as they werelooking to graduate, you know,
they would start that maybetheir senior year or as they
were in graduate school doingtheir master's engineering.
And what's challenging is whenyou're a full time student, it's
(01:54):
really hard to be able to dokind of all the other pieces
that are needed to make astartup run, right?
All the operations.
work that goes into it and sothat was really the whole idea
was it was kind of anaccelerator is what we called it
but the the real piece was a wayto just help folks as they're
trying to get stuff off theground like if you need to do
(02:16):
market research or create umoftentimes getting the initial
incorporation we we had a folksat the bu law clinic we'd work
with so things like that so itwas a pretty exciting initiative
and a few really excitingcompanies pop out out of that.
SPEAKER_02 (02:33):
Awesome.
So besides starting your owncompany now, but you also worked
as a deep learning softwareengineer at NVIDIA, which my son
loves the video cards that theyproduce.
So awesome.
But you also served as aresearch assistant at Stony
Brook University Lab forComputational Neurodiagnostics.
(02:57):
Holy
SPEAKER_01 (02:57):
cow.
Yeah, that was well before I gotinto the world of engineering.
But it was pretty funexperience.
Basically, a lot of stuff aroundneuroscience and
neurodiagnostics.
As MRIs became more popular todo research and ways to collect
information, the whole idea was,can we run interesting
(03:19):
conversations and experimentsaround that?
And so, yeah, I spent some timethere.
And then, obviously, NVIDIAspent some time on their data
platform team, which was prettycool.
And those are two, I think,really fascinating experiences
in that world.
SPEAKER_02 (03:36):
Well, that's very cool.
And I also saw that just thisyear, you were named New York's
who's who in emerging tech onthe emerging tech list.
So congratulations on that aswell.
SPEAKER_01 (03:47):
Thank you.
Yeah, that one, that one was apleasant surprise.
SPEAKER_02 (03:51):
All right.
So let's talk about polymorphy.
Let's talk about this.
So what inspired you to createthis and, and how does it help
public agencies improve theircommunications?
SPEAKER_01 (04:03):
Great question.
So I'll actually start with theprevious experience before
polymorphic was kind of twofold.
So I spent some time at a asmaller company that was in the
smart city space.
And as part of that, I got agreat chance to interact with
some cities, including a lot ofones in the greater Boston area
(04:26):
while I was living there.
And the whole idea around smartcities was, can we use data and
analytics to really build safer,more vibrant cities?
Really exciting initiativescontinue to this day.
But as I spent time with a lotof the government there, what
was really...
kind of immediately clear thatthe biggest challenge was
(04:48):
around, in a broad sense,communications and customer
service, right?
That's the piece that a lot offolks who are not in the world
of government don't reallyunderstand, which is government
might be the most complicatedcustomer service organization in
the world, frankly.
You take even the smallest cityand they're running 15 different
departments, right?
So when people, I've been atthis conference this week, it's
(05:09):
been great, but as people havementioned, oh, you know,
sometimes people ask us how dowe run it like a business and
what they're thinking is a smallbusiness right the local
laundromat or something likethat but the city's got
utilities and public works andyou know planning and zoning and
(05:29):
they're completely differentthey don't even have very
similar operations but the thingthat ties it all together is
customer service so what I hadseen was how challenging it was
to do customer service right soa lot of and this is the part of
our world that we're reallyfocused on the communications
PIO side and I'll get to that.
But what I was seeing was 50% ofthe time front desk was spending
(05:53):
was on repeat questions thatwere calls that people were
making because they couldn'tfind content on the website.
Another 25% of time was juststatus requests, right?
I had called earlier and I justwant to know where in the
process I am now.
And then you go on the insideand a lot of the, even if
certain stuff is digitizedinternally, a lot of it's very
manual.
(06:13):
And so I think about this idea alot and there's this really
tweet and I'm not I don't spenda ton of time on tour but
there's this there's this tweetthat came out that said hey I
want AI to do my laundry anddishes so I can do art and
writing and and that reallyresonated with me because I
really I think that was I wasthinking from the government
lens which is if we're acustomer service organization
(06:34):
right most cities counties stateagencies most time is being
spent on laundry and dishesright now it's the laundry and
dishes of customer service andso One of the leads with
Polymorphic is we do some reallyexciting stuff for an AI.
We call it an AI concierge,which is, it's a chatbot for the
website.
We also have an AI search.
We have it on the phone system,so it can answer calls in 28
(06:56):
different languages.
Instead of the phone trees,it'll actually route to your
department.
So happy to kind of dive in morethere.
But we also have an email, SMS,so every way your residents can
reach out to you and havequestions.
It acts as that conciergeexperience has your website
content, your codes.
It's similar to what people areused to with ChatGPT right now,
except it's controlled content.
(07:17):
So it's only your content andit's much easier to manage that
way.
SPEAKER_02 (07:21):
So Parth, are you still seeing...
So websites for governmentagencies are horrendous.
And I used to manage one when Iwas still working for
government.
And
SPEAKER_00 (07:34):
I'll tell you,
SPEAKER_02 (07:35):
trying to get information updated on there is
like getting an act of God.
At the same time, you want totry and give information to the
public but you can't get theaccurate information in the
system so how how doespolymorphic handle that are you
guys getting access to all theirsystems and then you're it just
(07:57):
finds it and then pulls it in
SPEAKER_01 (08:00):
yeah i mean that's that's the big idea we really
want to make the process easyfor for a lot of communications
and pio um departments becauseyou know you're updating the
website and if i have to uploadevery piece of content into also
the AI that's too difficult.
So basically our approach iswe'll automatically run through
the website, the code, all thosesources.
(08:22):
What's neat though too is whatwe'll do with a lot of our
customers is they actually usethe tool to do an audit of their
content because it's so mucheasier to ask, hey, here are the
common questions we get fromconstituents.
So we have this funny storywhere a village in Wisconsin we
work with, they were asking someof their common questions and
one of their questions was whois the police chief, right?
(08:44):
And I came up with the oldpolice chief, which was the
police chief from, you know,two, three years ago.
And the first instinct was,okay, you know, maybe the AI is
wrong.
I don't know.
And then they click through thesources, right?
Because our chatbot, our voice,you know, it's got all the
sources behind and you get afull log.
So it gives a full audit trail,which is great.
It clicked through the sources.
(09:06):
And lo and behold, they hadn'tupdated their police department
page in like three years.
And so that's kind of the thingthat I mean, obviously, that's a
more benign example, becausemore personnel, but you can
think about people are going toyour site already.
And I think it's really hard tofloat up what content might be
off.
So in many ways, we started tosee it used as a tool actually,
(09:29):
right internal staff to figureout, hey, for key questions
we're getting, you know, where'sour content up to date, and
we're actually working onpotentially a really neat tool
soon, which will probablyprovide free of charge or
something like that to cities iskind of a website checker.
Where is your websiteconflicting to kind of do a
readiness for using our AIchatbots and voice even more
(09:52):
effectively?
SPEAKER_02 (09:54):
So as an end user, as a front user and a back user,
I've handled them both ways.
So it's interesting.
So when I look at the thingsthat people would come in and I
did the FAQ thing many years agobecause FAQs I thought were very
helpful.
The problem is it's only, an FAQis only as good as a query that
(10:15):
the person puts in.
So if they can't figure out whatthey're trying to get to, they
can't find it.
So AI has definitely made life alittle easier because it at
least, give what is probably theclosest answer as opposed to
what we might come up with onour own.
But what I've also found is thatinformation that the agencies
(10:37):
have on their websites, like yousaid, the chief of police in one
agency, I still see threeagencies I go back checking,
they still have the place cardwith the chief's message and
it's from 10 years ago.
And it's just a holding card Nopicture, no email address, no
(10:58):
ability to contact anybody.
So as I see this, and I knowagencies struggle with this,
they want everybody to come backto their website, but their
website just doesn't have theoomph that it needs to do or
handle the bandwidth too.
SPEAKER_01 (11:12):
And so, I mean, there's two pieces of that that
we really get keyed in on.
So the first part I think youmentioned is great, right?
So you've gone through the wholeprocess here and added FAQs as a
way to make it more...
just easier for the commonquestions folks ask, but I'll
give you a simple example of whyAI becomes so valuable, right?
A lot of folks will like putcommon questions about the code
(11:34):
and they'll say, Hey, if youhave a short-term rental, like
here's the guidance, right?
The problem is most people mightnot know the term short-term
rental, right?
They might say, I have a Vrbo orI have an Airbnb.
What do I do, right?
And so the neat thing about AIversus these search tools, the
search or legacy chatbots thatused to be more keyword-oriented
(11:56):
where you had to program everyresponse in is what AI is doing
is it's not just saying, here,give me your content.
I'm going to understand themeaning of it.
And I'm also going to understandthe meaning of the question,
right?
So I know Airbnb is short-termrental.
I know Vrbo is short-termrental.
Your code's going to referenceit not as Airbnb or Vrbo.
They're going to say short-termrentals, right?
(12:17):
And so that's part one, right?
That's where AI, like moreconcretely, the reason I love
that example is it's just such acommon, everyone has run into
that, but it's government speakis very different from the way
your residents think, right?
They don't even think indepartments, right?
SPEAKER_02 (12:31):
Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (12:32):
So that's a whole other thing on phones.
SPEAKER_02 (12:35):
Absolutely.
And that's another thing.
You brought this up earlier.
You talked about they don't knowwhere they're at in the queue.
They don't know.
They've not gotten any updates.
And what I've seen in lawenforcement agencies that used
to government, because I wasinvolved in both aspects, people
change.
They leave positions.
They leave suddenly or they'reout on a medical and it's
(12:56):
sitting on somebody's desk.
You know, where's my...
FOIA was the one that was themost important one for PIOs.
And if a FOIA case got dropped,you could end up in some
sanctions for from the districtattorney's office because you
failed to meet the burden oftime limits.
Let's talk about that.
(13:17):
How does that
SPEAKER_01 (13:17):
help?
Yeah, no, that's a greatquestion.
So that's the second side of oursystem, right?
So we've got the AI conciergeand the AI concierge starts to
funnel into what we call likeour constituent relationship
management, but it's really likea customer service platform,
right?
So you can submit stuff online,track it online and give staff
tools.
So one of the counties in NorthCarolina we work with, this is
(13:37):
Exact Challenge.
public records request is thebig use case your communications
department has.
That's a great point on, one,the requirements.
There's time limits by which youneed to get back.
Oftentimes, people just file theextension right away because
they just know that it's goingto be so long to get back when
it's handled manually.
(13:59):
The other piece I'll even pointout is the coordinating with
other departments.
This is a larger county wherethey have 30 departments.
So the public records requestsmight come in through
communications, butcommunications and the PIO need
to coordinate with all theseother different departments on
depending on the request whereto get the information from.
(14:20):
And so that's actuallynon-trivial.
How does that happen right now?
Mostly email, right?
You forward an email and there'sno due date on emails, right?
Conceptually, there's no duedate on emails, but your FOIA
request has a deadline.
So what we have there, which ispretty great, it's an online
service.
a mission, but there's also away to build out those internal
(14:40):
workflows on the back end.
So this county, basically, thecommunications office, you know,
someone asks, how do I do apublic records request?
The AI answers it, it pointsthem to that online form they're
using polymorphic for.
They fill it out, all therequests, and it goes to
communications.
The great thing is they have, ifsomeone's out of the office, no
problem, because it's done at adepartment level.
(15:02):
So it gets assigned to multiplefolks with a due date, so it'll
bump someone else, it can getescalated automatically, and
then they'll say, okay, I need,you know, public works, solid
waste, and the sheriff on thisone, right?
And they can assign it to threedifferent departments.
It's all organized in aninternal kind of case management
(15:23):
view right so it's all organizedin one place they can keep track
of they can send emails from ittoo so if they want to do emails
they can do that but they canhave tasks so they can assign a
task saying hey sheriff i needthese documents back in you know
we have 20 days to fulfill youhave 15 days to do that so it
organizes everything and thenthey can look back you know you
go back two years and say heyyou know we got this kind of
(15:45):
request what how do we fulfillit and so you have that full
history as well um and so that'sbeen great i mean i think
leadership's loved it toobecause they can and see where
the bottlenecks are in theprocess too.
Because it does automaticanalytics on, hey,
communications is doingeverything in two days, but our
departments are taking three,four days to get back.
And suddenly that has a lot ofvalue as well.
SPEAKER_02 (16:07):
Yeah, absolutely.
I can definitely see that.
And I, and I've known this fromearly on when I started my
career, we, I handled FOIA,everything was manually do an
email, you sent an email, um,and, and you're waiting for the
person to get back to you.
Then you, you know, you hope youget the record in time and then
how do you deliver the record?
So I'm assuming polymorphichelps get the record digitally
(16:28):
to somebody as well.
SPEAKER_01 (16:29):
That's right.
That's right.
So you can submit it backdigitally.
If you're on an email, you cando that as well.
But you know, we've got the fullworkflow online.
so I can, you know, get them thestatus, they can download the
documentation all there.
So, this makes that wholeprocess seamless for public
records requests and it's ageneral workflow tool.
So that's a neat thing, right?
It doesn't, it's not justlimited to public records
(16:49):
requests, but a lot of folks useit that way and then other
departments are also usingpolymorphic in human services
and other places and so it makesit easier too for those
departments because they'refamiliar with polymorphic
software for other stuff they doso it also makes them faster at
responding to those publicrecords requests that are coming
from human
SPEAKER_02 (17:06):
And now a word from our sponsors.
SPEAKER_00 (17:14):
Ensure compliance and safeguard your organization
with S&D Archive, the leadingsocial archiving solution from
Social News Desk.
With easy retrieval and export,compliance alerts, and automatic
retention for all majorplatforms, including Nextdoor,
S&D Archive helps you stay aheadof risks and maintain complete
records with confidence.
(17:35):
And here's an exclusive offerjust for PIO podcast listeners.
Get three months free when yousign up.
Head over to socialnewsdesk.comslash PIO And
SPEAKER_02 (17:45):
now, back to the show.
Right.
All right, so I'm going to geekout on a different level here
for you, Parth.
Roads are big things for people,roads and maintenance and things
like that.
And, you know, they'll drivedown the road one day and all of
a sudden they've got a truck outthere and they're digging up the
road because a water main broke.
(18:06):
And, you know, and it happens.
There's one road I know whereabout every couple weeks a water
main breaks and it just keepsmoving down the road.
And I'm thinking at some point,is somebody going to say we need
to replace that whole pipe allthe way down instead of keep
doing the sectioning and payingthe overtime?
So I would assume polymorphiccould also work within a
(18:28):
department like their publicworks department and, and track
how old, a sewer pipe is andwhen it's expected to fail.
The expectation time of afailure.
SPEAKER_01 (18:40):
That piece is probably more on the asset
management side, but what we doon that side, which is pretty
neat, is let's say you want toreport an issue like that, or
they want to track the processby which they fix it.
For public works, potholes,broken pipes, street signs down,
street lights not working.
(19:02):
Those are all common use caseswhere, hey, I see it.
How do I, how do I report it?
And so people can do that inpolymorphic.
What's neat about the water mainbreak, which is actually funny.
And this is a toolcommunications folks love
because I remember at the behindthe scenes were for staff or a
CRM for the public where I AIconcierge online submission,
right?
Uh, Behind the scenes, becausewe're starting to also collect
(19:25):
with every interaction, hey, youknow, someone submitted this,
this is a request.
The water main break is a funnyexample because communicating
that normally is difficult,right?
Because it's a geographic fenceI want to communicate it, right?
Not everyone needs to know aboutthe water main break.
It's just the piece of thestreet that's affected.
And so what's neat is as youstart to build up that CRM
(19:47):
contact book, we have thisfeature where you can actually
draw a map They'll pull down thecontacts and you can send a mass
email to them saying, hey, thewater main broke.
We're working on fixing itwithout having to send an email
to everyone.
And while also being able torespond to that with the mass
communication.
SPEAKER_02 (20:07):
That's definitely a nice feature to have that
ability.
And I would think that in acrisis communication respect,
that would be valuable as wellfor public safety, law
enforcement, fire department,EMS.
SPEAKER_01 (20:21):
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (20:22):
Parth, let's talk about data, AI and public
messaging.
Misinformation is a big issuefor PIOs and, you know, getting
to it to try and dispel itquickly is really important,
especially on social media.
Can polymorphic help agenciesdetect and counter it in any
way?
Does it have a tool for that?
SPEAKER_01 (20:40):
So we don't have a tool on like the detect side
necessarily.
I mean, that's a good idea.
It might be something that wecould help out with.
We might need to think aboutthat.
So I'll go back to myengineering team with that.
But one thing that is, you know,great is, we talked about kind
of the AI concierge piece,right?
And I mentioned there's achatbot on the website, on the
phone system.
(21:00):
Social media is another big wayfolks reach out.
And one thing that we do isbecause we're open API, we can
integrate into the social mediapiece there.
So if people are sending, youknow, messages to your page or,
you know, DMs to your Twitterabout, hey, you know, I saw
this, you know, is this real orwhatever?
You can leverage that AI, whichis online, that controlled
(21:23):
content, right?
And it can provide that firstresponse.
So that's something that we'revery excited about.
I think misinformation is a hugechallenge for communications
departments.
There's going to be many piecesof that battle to fight.
I'll give another example that'snot on the social media side,
but you see all these...
you know, Google search isrolling out that AI assist,
(21:47):
right?
And we work with the surrogatecourt in New Jersey and they're
saying, well, the Google answeron like how I probate a will is
wrong.
And I said, why is that?
And they said, well, they'repulling from sources that are
not just the government.
Like it depends, right?
In different counties, the rulesare different.
In different states, the rulesare different.
(22:08):
So that's a challenge from amisinformation standpoint.
So that's what motivated them todo the chatbot, the AI search
because they're like, this isour branded, controlled content
AI answer.
SPEAKER_02 (22:19):
That's understandable.
Parth, agencies often strugglewith accessibility and language
barriers.
How does polymorphic, I know yousaid something about language
that can respond back, how doesit communicate across the
different languages and, ofcourse, accessibility issues as
well?
SPEAKER_01 (22:37):
I'll answer those in two parts because they're
related.
I think there's differentelements to both.
The language piece, We support75 different languages.
We're adding more every day onthe chatbot.
It's been incredible.
I've seen folks have...
Our customers have told us theyhad full conversations with
languages that previously theydidn't have anyone on staff who
(23:00):
could actually speak those.
So there's a county we work withwhere they have...
Most staff has English and somefolks know Spanish.
They have a huge Bengalipopulation.
So So if you're Bengali andtrying to get services in this
community, to no fault of thecounty, it's just difficult,
right?
None of the staff knows how tospeak that.
(23:23):
They rolled out this AI and allof a sudden, there's just people
asking questions in Bengali.
We saw this full conversationsomeone had about, and it
started very generic, right?
So there's like the surrogatecourt, which handles wills of
states, things like that.
And they opened with a supergeneric question of like, hey,
you know, a loved one justpassed away, what do I do?
And it walked the through thewhole process like, hey, do you
(23:45):
have a will or not?
It was an incredible example,honestly.
And for that county, it was,hey, we're opening up service to
so many new residents that wedidn't even know weren't able to
access our services because ofthat language barrier.
So that's part one.
The accessibility piece goeseven beyond that.
(24:08):
We work with a lot ofcommunities in Colorado.
Colorado, obviously, they pulledforward the ADA accessibility
mandates forward.
It was supposed to be last year.
I think they got an extension alittle bit on it.
It was really interesting to seethe challenge a lot of them were
(24:30):
facing with content becausePDFs, I think, are the number
one culprit around accessibilityright so you have the choice
between could i remediate do iremediate my pdfs which frankly
is very expensive right it isthe cost per page is almost
prohibitive if you're a smallercity if you're a larger
organization you just have toomany pdfs so at regardless of
(24:51):
what scale you are remediatingpdfs is difficult so they're
faced between the choice ofarchiving them right um or
taking them down in a lot ofcases and there's a lot of
valuable information in therethat you know residents and
businesses and want to ask andlearn about.
Or they keep it up and risklawsuits and noncompliance.
(25:12):
And so you're caught between arock and a hard place in the
most literal definition.
What we did with Castle Pines isamazing.
We put out a case study on it.
They've been an amazing teamthere, really innovative in
Colorado.
They actually use the AI.
And beyond website and codesources, you can upload internal
knowledge base, PDF, that kindof stuff.
(25:33):
And so they uploaded theirdocuments.
and then took them down from thewebsite.
But what they told the publicis, you can ask questions, and
we'll still pull the contentfrom there.
So we're not taking down anyinformation.
So you interact with thechatbot, AI search, we'll still
answer questions based on thosePDFs.
But now it's actuallyaccessible.
And so our chatbot and search isobviously, you know, WCAG level,
(25:57):
AA compliant.
And And so that was a greatexample of actually we hadn't
even thought about that.
We worked with PDFs becausethat's just another big content
piece that the chatbots andsearch and AI voice systems need
to pull from.
They actually did something veryclever where they actually used
it to make sure that they couldprovide the answers and get
(26:19):
compliant in that process.
So we're part of the equation.
I'm not saying we're the magicbullet for, hey, you sign up
with Polymorphic, you're ADAcompliant.
But with the website contentpiece, That is a big challenge,
right?
Am I going to take down a ton ofinformation that's very valuable
or do I keep it up and risknoncompliance?
And we're helping a lot of folksin Colorado and other states do
(26:41):
that.
SPEAKER_02 (26:42):
Let's talk about what polymorphic the agencies
you can work with.
Small to how large?
What can you guys work with?
SPEAKER_01 (26:49):
So, yeah, we work a pretty wide range.
Our largest, we have stateagencies.
We have counties that aremillions of residents.
So some really, really largeorganizations.
But we've done a prettyconscious effort to work with
small and mid-sizedorganizations as well.
So I would say our sweet spot is20 or 10 to 20,000 residents and
(27:14):
higher.
But that's not to say one of ourbest customers, we just did a
great customer video.
Tangent Oregon is 1300residents.
And we really care about makingsure our technology is also
accessible to smaller cities.
It's a different challenge,right?
In their case, they had threefull-time employees, right?
And one was retiring.
(27:35):
So you think about theinstitutional knowledge that's
disappearing.
They're about to lose 33% oftheir institutional knowledge.
And so that's where we're reallyexcited about AI and customer
services.
We really believe it's a forcemultiplier.
It's an investment in yourexisting staff.
Right now, hiring is sodifficult in government.
I think I started the numbers.
(27:56):
It's like 52% of local and stateemployees are thinking in the
next five to 10 years, they'regoing to retire.
And that is a shocking futurereality to deal with.
So how are we going to providethe existing level service, I
would argue better servicebecause constituents are
(28:17):
demanding more and more.
They're used to Amazon gives mepackage tracking, Domino's gives
me SaaS tracking.
I can chat 24-7 in 75 languages.
I want that with my government.
The demands are rising and Imight have half the staff to do
that in 5-10 years.
The refill rate is just nothappening.
(28:39):
That is what we're reallypassionate about.
We want to make sure governmentsare prepared.
we want governments to be knownas the best customer service
organizations out there.
Our, our internal vision andmotto we say is I want, you
know, a lot of day, a lot ofright now people, we, we opened
this conversation with peoplesay, Oh, I want to run like a
business.
And I don't want to flip that onhis head.
(28:59):
I want people to be going totheir, you know, local car
dealer or laundromat and say,Hey, why, why can't you run like
the city?
Why can't you run like thecounty?
Cause they're using all thisinnovative technology and the
customer service is so great.
And so long way of saying, um,Thank you.
It's a big challenge.
And I think that's somethingthat staffing is going to be a
(29:20):
really, really big piece of it.
SPEAKER_02 (29:22):
Have you, have you seen in the, in your experience
with pitching this togovernment, the, the governments
that are they coming to you?
Are you guys going out there andthrowing it out to them and
saying, Hey, this, this might bebeneficial to you, but where do
you see where you, I should say,where do you see you run into
the, the wall with localgovernment?
SPEAKER_01 (29:42):
So I think, I think it were AI is AI was new.
So the, this has changed alittle bit over the last year,
right?
We've become, I would say, andthis is all a shout out to our
engineering team and our clientsuccess team, like they've
really built probably the mostwell-tailored AI product for
customer service and government,right?
They've done a fantastic jobworking with our customers
there.
(30:03):
So a lot of it is more aroundactually education, right?
When it's something new forgovernments, a lot of folks
don't realize how AI could helpsome of the problems they're
facing, right?
Right now, if you asked everycity manager, every county
manager, even communicationsdepartment, what's your number
one problem?
What keeps you up at night?
It's staffing, right?
(30:23):
It's really hard to hire.
How do we provide services?
That doesn't mean necessarilyyou're thinking about the
solution, right?
Everyone thinks in the problem.
And our job is to communicatehow we can help with those
problems, right?
Staffing shortages, departmentsilos, resident frustration,
increase in expectations ofcustomer service and that demand
coming from the population.
(30:45):
So in states now where we'vestarted to see you know a lot of
counties hop on like New Jerseywe're at we cover a third of the
state already North Carolinawill be at 25% of the residents
will be covered by polymorphicservices over 30 million
Americans are covered bygovernments using polymorphic so
we've got you know a lot offolks using us and people are
saying hey I want that butthat's a big part of it right is
(31:09):
us getting the message out Ithink where we run into
resistance a lot of times folksthey sometimes think of AIA as a
replacement, or they think of AIas...
And this idea of like, oh, it'snot a person, right?
And I kind of challenge folks tothink about it differently,
actually, which is that exampleI mentioned earlier with the
(31:31):
multi-language.
That's a new outcome and a newconstituency they're able to
serve.
It's not about replacing, it'sabout value add, right?
When we talked about the AI, Iwant to do the laundry and
dishes.
I think that people realizethis, especially city managers
I've talked to, Take front deskroles.
The turnover is usually in ayear.
(31:52):
The folks are handling the phonecalls, right?
Either they get promoted or theyget frustrated.
And I think we had to askourselves, hey, if you're
answering the same questionsover and over again, is that a
fun and exciting job that we aredoing in government?
No, it's not.
And so I think we need to thinkabout the employee experience,
(32:13):
right?
The staff experience.
If we are having a hard timehiring, we're having a hard time
retaining, people, government'sgot an amazing mission, right?
I think right now, younger folkstoo are really excited about
mission, right?
That's something that matters tothem.
Local government, stategovernment is probably the most
impactful organization in ourlives.
I would argue that, okay?
But the experience internallydoesn't match up if I'm spending
(32:35):
all my time answering repeatquestions on the phone.
If I'm spending time on the penand paper, we're taking stuff on
email and trying to forwardthese 50 email long forwarding
chains to fulfill a publicrecords request.
So that's our job, right?
It's the education piece.
But I think that's where we seesome resistance, right?
Where folks are just, they don'tknow, right?
(32:57):
They hear AI as a buzzword.
They're like, what does it meanfor my government?
What can I do there?
And so that's the gap that we'retrying to break.
SPEAKER_02 (33:03):
And I know it's tough.
And I've seen this with, just inthe public sector, public
information officers with theuse of AI, not realizing there's
benefits to it.
And again, it's about 50-50right now.
Some people are like, no, Idon't want to use it.
I don't think it's good.
It's not of value to me.
And the reality of it is thereis value in it if you open your
mind up and think about what itcan help you do.
(33:25):
Because for me, as a PIO, I wantto be able to do as many things
as I possibly can.
And without that ability,without having ChatGPT to help
me solve some minor tasks orsolve problems or give me
direction when I'm looking forlike an angle on a story and I'm
trying to make sure I coveredall the bases, but I'm not sure.
(33:48):
And I ask AI to analyze it andthey say, oh yeah, you missed
this and this.
That just saved me like a weekof trying to figure it out, if
not more.
And I think AI, one of thethings that government needs to
realize is AI is there.
It makes everything feel faster.
It makes everything moreefficient.
(34:10):
And it lets you focus on thepiece.
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01 (34:12):
100%.
It makes everything faster.
I think that's a great point.
And the thing I ask a lot offolks, I hear that.
And the other thing I hear is,oh, let's wait, right?
Like, let's wait to figure outon AI what to do.
And what I tell people inresponse is in three years, or
two years, even using chatbotsand AI on the phone will be the
(34:33):
common way most people interactand interface with the private
sector and a lot of governmentsso so the question is if that's
inevitable right what what's thewait for right uh and so that's
that's why i tell folks rightobviously we're in that space um
we're not saying it has to bewith us but i my point is you
really got to take it seriouslybecause you don't want to fall
(34:55):
behind right and and i thinkwith any new innovation
governments are generally hey wedon't want to be first now with
you know a lot of stuff we'redoing a lot of people have
already done it right we'retalking about 200 departments 30
million Americans are covered bythis.
Um, they're used to thisexperience.
What you, what you don't want tobe is last, right?
And I think that's a big concernfor councils and city managers
(35:16):
because that's where yourresidents get really
frustrating, right?
They see the neighbors and say,Hey, the experience right there
is so good.
And the problem with city andcounties is you kind of have a
monopoly on, on your residents.
So it's really important toprovide great service because
otherwise they'll getfrustrated, right?
Cause they don't have as muchease and Hey, I can just get up
and leave.
And so, um, And that's why I'mso passionate about customer
(35:39):
service.
And I think a lot of ourgovernments are too.
SPEAKER_02 (35:42):
And I agree.
And so if somebody, if somebodywants to reach out to you guys
and learn more about what you door how you do it, and I'll, I'll
let you throw their pitch out atthe very end when we're done,
but what's it?
And no, no, I honestly, Ibelieve it.
I look at your product and I'mlike, this is what a lot of
governments need.
(36:02):
They really do.
And like you said, the, the,being last is the worst thing in
the world for local governmentnow you need to be an innovator
and this is an innovative pieceof technology and we it needs to
be promoted out there it needsto be pushed so I believe me I'm
100% behind you on this but ifsomebody wants to reach out and
connect with somebody atpolymorphic what do they got to
(36:26):
do
SPEAKER_01 (36:26):
well it's super easy so the website's a great place
to go it'sp-o-l-i-m-o-r-p-h-i-c.com you go
there, there's a button at thetop, big blue button, request a
demo, right?
And we'll ask for what regionyou're in.
What's great is we got anamazing team covering kind of
the different regions.
So they got experience with yourneighbors, folks who've had
(36:49):
similar challenges.
So we talked about like CastlePines in Colorado.
We just brought on another onein Colorado, Littleton, great
team there.
So if you're in Colorado, youget someone who's actually
worked with Coloradomunicipalities.
Kate on our team is fantastic.
She'll walk you through that.
So reach out to that way.
We'll get you in front of theright folks.
You can email me directly, too,if you want.
(37:12):
If you just want to talk AI, I'malways happy to.
I really like to make myselfaccessible.
My email is just my first name,parth, P-A-R-T-H, at
polymorphic.com.
Those are the two best ways toreach out.
We're on LinkedIn.
I think the website's a greatplace.
If it's just, hey, I want tolearn more about AI.
SPEAKER_02 (37:32):
I'll add those into the show note, and I'll make
sure that they pop up when we dothe video and stuff.
So definitely want to promotethat.
So Parth, let's switch this up.
Before we go into rapid fire,I'm going to ask you this.
Is there a question I shouldhave asked?
And if so, how would you haveanswered?
SPEAKER_01 (37:47):
Oh, that's a good question.
I think the questions youcovered were fantastic.
The one that I just like tobring attention to is around,
you know, we've been talking alot about technology and AI.
And the one I think it's good toask is just how hard is it to
get set up, right?
So even if it's great, we'retalking about everyone's going
(38:08):
to do it, what's the effort ittakes to get this set up?
Because people are used to, whenyou think technology
implementations, they think ERP.
They think the finance systemERP, it's like a two-year
project, huge headache, it'ssuper difficult.
We've really thought about thatexperience a lot because of
that.
I think people are often, a lotof the reason people are
(38:32):
hesitant on new technology isjust they're so scarred by these
old legacy technology where ittook forever to implement and it
was super painful.
So what's really neat is we madethat really easy.
Like we were talking about thewebsite integrations and all
that.
So we've done the heavy liftingon our side.
people go live within two tothree calls with our team and so
(38:55):
we're talking a total investmentof three to four hours max for
the the chatbot on the site umwhich is you know i highlight
that because it's just sodifferent from other
technologies so i i really saywhen obviously the crm and the
workflow piece that's moreinvolved we sit down with the
team and you know really holdfolks hands to like figure out
(39:15):
what the workflow is the processbut for getting started with ai
it is easy.
It doesn't need to be difficult.
We've really invested a lot oftime in making it as easy as
possible.
We care about the product.
We also care about theexperience of just getting to
use the product.
We think of that as part of theproduct experience, as part of
the user experience.
(39:36):
So
SPEAKER_02 (39:38):
I can't believe two to three weeks.
I mean, that's amazing because Ilook at like, I saw something on
Doja's website the other day andI'm not dealing with politics,
but I'm thinking about, theywere doing an overall of, I
think it was the IRS system.
And Something like$11 billion in15 years and nothing's been
(40:04):
produced.
And I'm thinking, really?
I mean, that's horrible.
And nobody wants to say, okay,it's going to take two years to
implement new technology becauseyou know this from your
background.
Two years technology, that'sfive, six generations
SPEAKER_01 (40:20):
gone.
Right, right.
Like you're always playing catchup then.
If it's going to take years toimplement, it's like, oh, we're
already late again.
We're back to implementing.
Yeah, implementation speedmatters for that reason.
I don't think that's somethingpeople talk a lot about in
government technology.
If it's going to take two years,you're probably not going to be
getting the most moderntechnology.
It's going to be a pain toupgrade.
(40:41):
It should feel natural.
New updates come out.
It should be coming outconstantly.
SPEAKER_02 (40:47):
Right, absolutely.
All right, let's switch this up.
Rapid fire questions.
You ready?
All right, texting or talking?
SPEAKER_01 (40:54):
Talking.
SPEAKER_02 (40:57):
Movies or books?
SPEAKER_01 (40:59):
Books.
SPEAKER_02 (41:01):
Coffee, tea, or energy drink?
Tea.
Cats or dogs?
Dogs.
Favorite go-to karaoke song?
SPEAKER_01 (41:13):
That's a tough one.
Let's go party in the USA.
All
SPEAKER_02 (41:20):
right.
If you could have a superpower,what would it be?
SPEAKER_01 (41:25):
I feel like time travel would be amazing.
SPEAKER_02 (41:30):
If you could instantly become an expert in
one thing, what would it be?
I
SPEAKER_01 (41:34):
would love to learn more about physics and
especially all the crazy stuffthat's going on in particle
physics.
That would be a really coolarea.
SPEAKER_02 (41:44):
Ask permission or beg for forgiveness?
SPEAKER_01 (41:53):
Beg for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02 (41:57):
What place do you most
SPEAKER_01 (41:57):
want to travel
SPEAKER_02 (41:58):
to?
I
SPEAKER_01 (41:59):
feel like Japan's on the list.
I've heard great things about...
I think there's like thisfive-day hiking thing you can do
in the southern part of Chilethat I've heard.
And I've really wanted to dothat with my brother.
So that's another one on thelist.
SPEAKER_02 (42:15):
Okay.
Yeah.
Uh, what is that?
Puka?
Um, I know.
All right.
Uh, favorite way to relax aftera long day, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (42:24):
Favorite way to relax after a long day.
SPEAKER_02 (42:26):
What's your favorite way to relax?
Yes.
What's your favorite way?
SPEAKER_01 (42:30):
I love cooking.
So I'm a big fan of, you know,making, you know, sitting down
and making a nice meal.
Um, I also like to write in myfree time.
So that's something I'll oftendo.
Um, those are, those are two upthere.
SPEAKER_02 (42:46):
If you could sit down and have tea with any
historical figure living ordead, who would it be?
SPEAKER_01 (42:52):
Oh, that is a good one.
I would go really far back, andI would probably go to Egyptian
times, because the thing thatshocks me is the start of their
civilization to the end ofEgyptian dynasties is actually
longer than from the end totoday.
So I would be super curious tojust hear in the middle, how did
(43:16):
they maintain the dynasties andcivilizations for that long?
I think it's so fascinating.
SPEAKER_02 (43:23):
Oh, yeah.
There's some technology that waslost somewhere.
Oh, I agree.
Don't get me, I'll go conspiracytheory on that one for you.
All right, some final thoughts.
What key points would you likeour listeners to take from
today's interview?
SPEAKER_01 (43:38):
Yeah, I mean, I think the first one is, look, AI
is not something to be scaredof.
It's something that can bereally, really valuable for your
constituents.
Remember, you know, we talkabout this with everyone.
Customer service is our numberone job and it really can make a
difference there.
I think right now we're, we gotthis hiring challenges already.
I think that's only going to getworse.
(43:58):
And so the question is, preparetoday to make sure we're
providing the best customerservice we can for the future
for our residents and ourbusinesses and our visitors in a
world where we might have lessand less resources to do that.
It doesn't have to be hard.
It doesn't have to be a scarything, but find the right
partner.
And there's a lot of folksalready doing it.
(44:22):
So it's not jumping in first.
So I'd say now is the time to besecond and don't be last.
SPEAKER_02 (44:32):
As we wrap this up, is there a motto or a piece of
wisdom that you live by?
SPEAKER_01 (44:36):
Yeah, the one I live by, I live by two.
So the first one is more atechnical one.
It's move the mean of standarddeviation.
So I think about that in a lotof stuff we do is, hey, I don't
really believe inincrementalism, right?
Like there's a lot of smallpieces that matter.
But when we think about thestuff we do, we really want to
(44:58):
improve outcomes by a meaningfulchange where people can see that
and feel that difference.
But the one I live by personallya lot is the strength within you
is greater than the task aheadof you.
That's a big one I live by.
Okay.
Outstanding.
SPEAKER_02 (45:14):
All right, Parth, here's your chance again.
Let's talk about how people canreach out and connect with
Polymorphic.
SPEAKER_01 (45:20):
Yeah, absolutely.
So Polymorphic, once again, wedo AI and CRM and workflows with
our AI concierge.
We have the chatbot, the searchon the phone system.
That one's great.
So if you have phone trees andthings like that, a lot of time
savings, 24-7, multiplelanguages.
And then we have a great kind ofCRM workflow tool if you're
(45:41):
struggling with paper-basedprocesses Reach out.
We're always excited for just aconversation, too.
It might not be the timing now.
It might not be you're justinterested in AI.
But the best way to reach out,go to our website,
polymorphic.com.
That'sP-O-L-I-M-O-R-P-H-I-C.com.
Google sometimes will change itto a Y, but it's P-O-L-I.
(46:04):
My email is parth atpolymorphic.com, so feel free to
email me as well directly.
I love to hear from all thelocal government leaders.
But definitely check out thesite.
If you're interested, request ademo.
It doesn't have to be a highcommitment thing.
I would say the demo is free,right?
So meet our team.
They're great folks.
They'd love to chat more andlearn and looking forward to
(46:25):
hearing from folks.
SPEAKER_02 (46:26):
And I'll add all that into the show notes.
Perfect.
Parth, thank you very much forbeing on the show.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_01 (46:30):
Appreciate
SPEAKER_02 (46:30):
it.
I hope you enjoyed this episodeand our content.
If you are listening on aplatform that allows reviews,
please give us a review.
We read all reviews and yourfeedback is essential.
Do not forget to check out oursponsor social news desk thank
you social news desk for theirsponsorship and their offer to
all our listeners please clickthe link at the bottom of
(46:54):
today's show notes to helpsupport the show your support in
any amount is greatlyappreciated until next time take
care stay curious and keep theconversation going you're the
heart and soul of the piopodcast
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.