The challenge

Now means now. When an emergency arises and people need help, they need it now. A government agency coping with one unexpected event found itself beset by another crisis just 10 days later.

Suddenly, people scattered across two geographic regions were in need of an array of resources, from financial to food, shelter and transportation, medical and mental health services. Events triggering the urgent need for contact center support could not have been predicted. There was no meeting to decide: “We go live on this date.”

Instead, TTEC and its public sector client took a pre-emptive approach, collaborating and mapping a plan one year in advance to prepare for any contingency, whatever the nature, scope, or location might turn out to be. It was an on-call arrangement that demanded a constant state of readiness to activate a turnkey contact center operation whenever the client said, “Go.”

Our solution

TTEC’s agile recruitment model made it possible to hire, screen, and train a massive number of contact center associates in short order. Because associates would be handling sensitive personal information and government agencies have specific data-handling requirements, screening and clearance were rigorous.

“Our desired candidate is one who has been previously cleared and we augment that list with people who are clearable,” said one executive involved in the project. With a large Spanish-speaking population reaching out to the contact center, language skills were important to communicate clearly and connect callers with the resources they needed.

TTEC deployed its secure, cloud-based Humanify G contact center solution, which is designed for government agencies and can be scaled up and down as needs dictate. Powered by Cisco, the FedRAMP-authorized platform meets stringent security and reliability standards. TTEC and the client continue to meet weekly to ensure a speedy response should new support needs arise in the future.

The results

TTEC screened, hired, trained, and deployed more than 600 contact center associates, 100% of whom were U.S.-based and worked remotely, enabled by the Verint workforce management solution. A full 50% of
associates, team leaders, and quality assurance staff were bilingual, which was vital for assisting Spanish-speaking callers. The contact center handled 148,166 calls in four months.

Average handle time (AHT), which started at 22 minutes per call, dropped to 15 minutes (a 31% reduction) in three weeks. The AHT achieved exceeded the client’s goal by six minutes.

Anecdotal feedback furnished to TTEC indicated that associates scored well on empathy, an essential aspect of creating a positive experience to support callers given the program’s highly intense situations.