Department of Labor handles a tsunami of paperwork

The State of Delaware copes with a tsunami of benefit claims caused by COVID-19. The state manages a huge increase in unemployment benefit claims, while improving customer service with automated processes and increased citizen options.

Swamped in benefit claims 
The State of Delaware’s Department of Labor is responsible for the employment-related needs of 400,000 Delaware workers and 20,000 businesses. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak economic havoc, unemployment figures have skyrocketed, resulting in a deluge of benefit claims. From a pre-COVID average of 452 claims a week, the Department received over 64,000 claims in the first four weeks of the pandemic. The Department needed a solution that would help it to cope with this tsunami of claims, but first it had to get an overall picture of the situation. Darryl Scott, Director of the Division of Unemployment Insurance, adds: “Before COVID, we had already identified the need for an effective CRM tool. It was on our roadmap to implement a solution that would give us better visibility of the volume and status of contacts, enabling us to manage customer interactions across all channels. When COVID hit, the need for that solution became very urgent.”

Streamlining through automation
With the support of partner, GlideFast Consulting, the Department implemented ServiceNow Customer Service Management, Virtual Agent, and Knowledge Management.

Darryl continues, “We wanted to improve communication and be able to more quickly respond to claimants.” The self-help feature of the Virtual Agent was a critical component of the solution as many of the questions the team was receiving were very straight forward. Without the Virtual Agent, each contact required a person to respond, so this functionality extended the team’s capabilities allowing faster responses. 

Out of hours self-service
In addition to the existing methods of contact, Delaware citizens can also chat with Virtual Agent and visit 24 useful knowledge bases. “The self-help feature of Virtual Agent is a critical component,” says Darryl. “Allowing citizens to self-service deflects work away from our agents and allows us to be more efficient.” If users cannot successfully self-service, they can still speak to a live agent and a case is raised. Valuable insights for the future The new system has enabled the Department of Labor to gain valuable insights on how to improve its internal processes. According to GlideFast, over the initial six-week period, there were more than 475,000 interactions with Virtual Agent and 150,000+ clamant cases passed through CSM. Over 48,000 cases were resolved through CSM, there were 8,000+ live chat conversations, and more than 4,000 faxes were processed. Total benefits paid from March 1 to August 1 were $741,134,448.

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