The challenge

Amid the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, an American non-profit organisation, 335forNC, had succeeded in obtaining a deadline extension for low-income families to apply for relief funds from the North Carolina Department of Revenue (NCDOR). The extension allowed low-income families with at least one child under the age of 16 who may have been unaware of the program, to apply for $335 in extra COVID-19 funding from NCDOR’s N.C. Extra Credit Grant program. Charlotte Centre for Legal Advocacy, organisers of 335forNC, needed a partner that could mobilise quickly to deliver contact centre technology and support services to provide critical outreach support and assist low-income families in navigating the application process.

Our solution

TTEC was engaged to assemble a virtual contact centre to provide inbound and outbound support. Speed was essential. Within 72 hours we stood up a virtual contact centre and related systems staffed with 60 experienced work-from-home agents. Most had recently assisted residents in another state with unemployment applications, so they were able to easily pivot to assist the similar grant application process with minimal extra training needed.

“A combination of leadership experience at the frontline and leveraging TTEC's technology allowed our teams to build a strong bridge to aid these North Carolina families."

- L.T. McCrimmon, administrator at 335forNC

After the virtual contact centre was assembled, the 335forNC team, powered by TTEC and its agents, proactively reached out to those who had missed the deadline or had incomplete applications. For inbound calls, we assisted callers in filling out the application and populated fields for them.

We leveraged our comprehensive CXaaS technology resources, such as TTEC Intelligent Voice Assistant (IVA), to provide rapid responses and help callers submit their applications faster with a more streamlined caller experience. If more information was needed, the IVA connected the caller with a TTEC agent.

The results

TTEC handled over 13,000 incoming and outgoing calls in the less than two weeks before the Dec. 7 deadline. In total, TTEC helped 24,946 families complete applications to the fund managed by NCDOR during the extension period, which will distribute over $8 million in grants to the applicants.

"TTEC's CXaaS platform provided 335forNC with the ability to rapidly deploy both the citizen engagement technology and the multilingual support required to serve a diverse set of families. The main goal was to assist families in need, and we were fortunate to gather the resources to navigate them through the application process. A combination of leadership experience at the frontline and leveraging TTEC's technology allowed our teams to build a strong bridge to aid these North Carolina families," said L.T. McCrimmon, administrator at 335forNC.