Webinar recording · 1 hour
How Sumter County Handles 12,000+ Resident Calls Per Month with Voice AI
The implementation story behind the numbers: Stephen Kennedy, Assistant County Administrator, on how the oldest county in America went from an Animal Services pilot to AI at the front of its 24/7 line in six months, and the lessons a year of production taught it.
Looking for the results by department? That is the Sumter County case study. This page is the how.
Free for local government leaders and staff. We review requests and email the recording, usually within a business day.
12,000+
Resident calls a month
72%
Handled without staff
~300
Calls a day through the agent
10%
Fewer repeat contacts in a year
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Get the recording and slides
The full one-hour recording and the slide deck, emailed to you after a quick review. Free for local government leaders and staff; we usually send within one business day.
Call the live demo built for your governmentIn the recording
Implementation lessons the county covers
- 01
Why the county started
Roughly 60 percent of calls into Sumter's 911 center were coming in on administrative lines. The county built a 24/7 Citizens Information Center to absorb them, then asked what voice AI could do on top of it.
- 02
Adoption, department by department
Building embraced the agent and drove the integrations; some divisions asked for transfer-only. Why the county let each department set its own scope, and what that did to deflection rates.
- 03
The quiet launch
Sumter switched Animal Services over with no public announcement, took the criticism head-on, and fixed what residents flagged. Stephen's challenge to attendees: do what your community expects, not what Sumter did.
- 04
Knowledge gaps, QA, and what broke
The agent surfaced outdated pages on the county website. A 15-minute outage led to automatic failover. Context lost on transfers led to contextual handoffs between agents.
- 05
Integrations that file the work
Zendesk was the first API integration: the agent geo-validates the address against county maps and opens the ticket. CitizenServe followed for the building department.
- 06
Q&A with the county
State guidance on AI, work-order integrations, emotionally heavy calls, staffing impact, and how emergency escalations reach dispatch.
Sumter County sits between Orlando and Tampa, grew almost 40 percent between 2010 and 2020, and has the highest median age of any county in the United States. Its residents pick up the phone, and the county publishes one number for everything: the agent’s job is to get each caller to an answer, or to the right person, the first time.
The rollout
How Sumter County rolled out voice AI: pilot to 24/7 front door in six months
Jul 20, 2025
Animal Services pilot goes live. Chosen for its call volume, mix of questions and field workflows, and a public quick to give feedback.
Aug to Sep 2025
Building department comes on: permits, inspections, plan review. The busiest department becomes the most engaged, and drives the first integrations.
Late Sep 2025
Pilot proven. The county signs its first full year with EffiGov.
Oct 2025
Community Responder program added, answering questions about neighborhood groups and the PulsePoint app with texted links to the county's own articles.
Nov 2025
Agent set up as overflow behind the human Citizens Information Center, catching calls when staff are busy.
Jan 2026
Veterans Services and the fire department's administrative line added. A county phone-system outage puts the agent at the front of the main 24/7 number within 30 minutes; it stays there.
Today
Six agents, about 300 calls a day, 12,000+ a month, 72 percent handled without staff. Public Works is in testing as the next department.
From the recording
In Stephen Kennedy’s words
“We never intended to replace any staffing with an AI agent. What we have found is that it allowed staff to have additional time for those calls, so they provided a better human experience when the calls did get escalated to them.”
“Within, I want to say, under 30 minutes, we were running live on EffiGov as the front agent.”
“We saw a 10 percent reduction in the number of incident contacts over the last year, and the county has grown that much more. People are getting the answer the first time.”
“There is always going to be an out. You would never get stuck in a trap or loop of the system. If you say, I just want to talk to somebody, it is designed to escalate you to a customer support representative.”
“Don't do what I did, per se. Do what your community would ask and expect of you to do.”
Lightly edited for clarity from the session transcript.
One call, verbatim
Saturday morning, 34 seconds, handled
Sumter County handles about 300 calls like this every day. The recording shows how it got there.
Implementation questions the briefing answered
Who presented the briefing?
Stephen Kennedy, Assistant County Administrator of Sumter County, Florida, presented and took questions. Kennedy has been with the county for 15 years, oversees county technology, and came up through the fire department, where the question of non-emergency call volume first surfaced. EffiGov co-founders Aubteen Pour-Biazar and Aden Clemente hosted.
How many resident calls does Sumter County's voice AI handle?
More than 12,000 resident calls a month, about 300 a day, with roughly 72 percent resolved entirely by the AI and no county employee involved. Six department agents were live at the time of the briefing, with Public Works in testing as the next.
Did Sumter County announce the AI to the public?
No. The county made the switch quietly, starting with Animal Services, and addressed criticism as it came. Kennedy was direct that this was a choice for Sumter's community and that other governments may need a formal announcement or stakeholder engagement first.
Which department went first, and why?
Animal Services, on July 20, 2025. It has high call volume, a mix of general questions and scheduled services, field response, and a public that gives feedback quickly, so problems would surface early.
Did the AI replace county staff?
No. The county never intended to, and did not. Staff on the Citizens Information Center gained time on the calls that do reach them, and managers worry less on days when staffing is light because the agent is there.
What happens when the AI is down?
Early on, a roughly 15-minute outage required a manual switch back to human agents. Automatic failover was built afterward: if the system is unavailable, calls route to the fallback automatically.
What systems is it integrated with?
Zendesk, the county's CRM, was the first API integration: the agent geo-validates the caller's address against county maps and creates the ticket, often already resolved. CitizenServe, the building department's permitting system, followed.
How are emergencies handled if someone reaches the agent?
The agent recognizes emergency and safety situations and escalates. Sumter set up a dedicated number into its communications center, used only by the agent, so those transfers arrive on dispatch consoles as high priority.
How do I get the recording?
Click play on the video or use the form on this page. Every request is reviewed by the EffiGov team, and the recording and slides are emailed, usually within one business day. The session is free for local government leaders and staff.
How long is the recording?
About an hour: roughly 45 minutes of presentation, then open Q&A with attendees from Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Michigan.
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