Tennessee DHS redefines the customer experience for government services

Agency slashes inquiry resolution times by 70%

Tennessee Department of Human Services is committed to improving the lives of Tennesseans
It’s the mission of the dedicated people at Tennessee Department of Human Services (DHS). By offering temporary economic assistance, work opportunities, and protective services, the department helps Tennesseans become self-sufficient and enhances their quality of life.

Customer service is an enormous part of this commitment, ensuring that citizens have access to the support they need, when they need it. According to Landon Cook, Director of Customer Service Operations at the DHS, “Our goal is to deliver the best possible customer service at the lowest possible cost. That may not sound new in other industries, but for state government, it’s ground-breaking.”

Tennessee DHS struggled to deliver responsive customer service due to siloed channels and manual processes
Faced with limited staff and rising customer volumes, the department started to fall short of its customer service commitments. Call center wait times rose to more than two hours at peak periods, and email responses took days.

Landon says, “We didn’t have a platform where we could share information from call to call, let alone across multiple channels. And, because we relied on manual processes, it took 36 hours just to assign an inquiry to the right agent–and an additional 84 hours to resolve it. It just wasn’t acceptable. To deliver the level of customer service that our citizens deserve, we had to modernize our approach.”

Tennessee DHS chose ServiceNow to transform how it serves Tennesseans
The department looked for a platform to create a seamless customer experience, simplify and accelerate service delivery, unify workflows, share information, and deliver the insights its leadership needed to make data-driven decisions about customer service. It chose ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM), built on the Now Platform^®.

Landon explains, “We looked at other products, but ServiceNow ticked all the boxes. And, because our state IT department, Strategic Technology Solutions, already used ServiceNow and was very satisfied with it, that meant that we were part of a state-wide platform.”

With ServiceNow, DHS has slashed inquiry resolution times by 70%
DHS launched ServiceNow CSM state-wide, creating a user-friendly and responsive customer experience for Tennesseans.    

Landon says, “We immediately saw dramatic improvements in quality and efficiency. Instead of taking 36 hours to assign an inquiry, it now takes less than two minutes. In total, we’ve reduced our end-to-end resolution times for high-level inquiries by more than 70%–from 120 hours to 34 hours. And, of course, that efficiency also translates directly into lower costs for our taxpayers.”

ServiceNow helps DHS deliver a consistent, efficient, and transparent omnichannel experience
“We’re giving Tennessee citizens the experience they deserve. Our services are now accessible by phone, email, live chat, lobby kiosks, and mobile. We deliver a consistent experience across all our channels, and we now have a single view of our customers. That’s broken-down silos across our program areas, increased collaboration, and dramatically reduced duplicate inquiries. And, we now have the data and reports we need to continuously improve the services we deliver,” says Landon.

Other Tennessee government departments are looking to replicate the DHS’s success
News of the DHS customer service solution is spreading. It has already won an internal award from the State of Tennessee and other departments are looking to deploy ServiceNow CSM as part of a statewide rollout.

According to Landon, “In addition to dramatically enhancing service delivery, this statewide rollout will also provide a unified customer and service view across departments–truly delivering on the Governor’s vision of ‘no wrong door’ in a transparent Tennessee.”