Protecting the most vulnerable

Surging demand for public assistance

The Family Support Division (FSD) at the Missouri Department of Social Services (DSS) helps people in need across the state of Missouri by determining their eligibility for public assistance.

Around 450 agents handle about 30,000 calls weekly. This includes a dedicated line for customers seeking food stamps under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and needing to book interviews, either over the phone or in person at one of 140 resource centers.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency saw a surge in SNAP applications from low-income families, as well as increased requests for healthcare, temporary assistance, child support and other vital services.

On-premises tech struggles to surge

Tough situations were inadvertently made worse by failing technology. Limited to using the phone, customers would suffer extended wait times due to on-premises technology that struggled to cope with spiking volumes.

“Once it reached a certain limit, our old phone system stopped accepting calls and played a message directing customers to website information,” said Nichole Conway, Program Manager at Missouri Department of Social Services. “All of this caused negative media attention, a poor customer experience and, potentially, non-compliance.”

Along with a lack of reporting and forecasting tools, the FSD had to compete with 16 other government agencies for internal IT support — meaning the simplest of IVR or call flow changes could take a significant amount of time.

An online appointment request was created as a stopgap. However, employees would still have to call back to manually schedule interviews based on staff availability and the customer’s preferred resource centre location.

Flawless migration to the cloud

Backed by its CEO, Missouri DSS participated in a task force to radically transform its contact centre operations. The race was on to find an omnichannel cloud-based solution that would offer greater customer choice, automation and self-sufficiency.

“Genesys came in and did a demo,” said Conway. “All the agencies were blown away by the platform’s flexibility, the digital and reporting capabilities. What also stood out was how easy it was for a non-tech person to maintain. That was a big selling point. We stopped searching after that.”

Genesys Professional Services oversaw a flawless migration to the Genesys Cloud platform — sharing knowledge, assisting with customizations and setting up IVR profiles and outbound campaigns.

“Their engineers were excellent and helped us figure everything out on the fly,” added Conway. “We had 30 days of technical support but hardly used any of it.”

Crucial conversations on all the right channels

The move to Genesys has allowed an increased number of staff to be able to take calls. With the previous solution, staff with access was limited to certain individuals. With Genesys Cloud, anyone on the Income Maintenance team can have access and take calls from customers as needed.

Now, conversations not only take place over the phone, but also over text and chat. And Missouri DSS gained the ability to turn on new channels like email and social media at will.

Attracting about 550 monthly interactions, its SMS-based messaging service now allows customers to interact with an agent for general questions about application processes and policies. In addition, appointment scheduling has been largely digitized by a chatbot. Created through a seamless integration of Genesys and Google Cloud Contact Centre AI, that automation dramatically improved a time-consuming, error-prone practice

“Customers can schedule appointments using the IVR or live chat, where they’re greeted by our virtual agent,” said Conway. “The chatbot invites them to select a phone or face-to-face interview at their local office based on their post code. Phone appointments are then loaded into Genesys Preview Campaign. Our agents don’t even need to dial out. They just go on-queue to be connected to the customer in a timely manner.”

More speed, less stress

Live chat is proving to be more popular than SMS with some 32,000 monthly interactions. Containment rates (the number of users who interact with a chatbot and leave without ever speaking to a live human agent) hover at around 50%.

Artificial intelligence-powered Genesys sentiment analysis tools have also been deployed to dig deeper into the customer experience. For instance, these tools are used to evaluate the words and emotional tone used during calls. The results help highlight staff training needs and opportunities for customer education campaigns.

Among a host of service improvements so far achieved are a 44% decrease in average speed of answer and a 50% drop in abandoned calls. Satisfaction scores are up, with 91% of customers having a positive experience when using the chatbot-powered appointment scheduler.

Employees also enjoy a better experience. “Our staff can see their schedules at a glance, including breaks and off-queue time,” concluded Conway. “Introducing text and chat, we’ve added job variety and respite from back-to-back phone calls, reducing stress and potential risk of burnout. And we have greater control over the platform ourselves and don’t have to rely so much on IT support.”

Future plans include introducing email confirmations and expanding languages available for automated information relayed to customers.