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New York is one of the states in the US with the highest population of military veterans. In 2022, the state spent over $8 million on their welfare. After their military service, vets are vulnerable to a lot of social and health issues, including food insecurity, mental health issues, and housing issues. The NYC Department of Veterans Services (DVS) aids military veterans, but they, too, need to outsource some tasks to experts for a more cohesive and smooth-running campaign.
One such project is in association with New York Cares, a volunteer management nonprofit that engages thousands of volunteers for campaigns from phonebanking to education and service. This project, called “Mission Vet Check,” aims to call thousands of vets in New York and check up on them about the resources (or lack thereof) they need help with.
New York Cares runs the phonebanking campaign with CallHub since November 2023, and we are delighted to share their success story.
How DVS and New York Cares run this project
We spoke to Kayla Lawrence-White, the Community Relations and Program Design Office at New York Cares, about Mission Vet Check. She tells us that they acquire a cold list of contacts from DVS, and NY Cares is responsible for getting in touch with all contacts over calls.
Over calls, agents ask the vets if they have access to food, housing, healthcare, financial, and mental health resources and if they need any support. Whatever requirements the vets confirm, the agents share resources over text. DVS is still involved with this project by taking responsibility for the follow-ups (which are currently not done on CallHub).
“We use phonebanking to have volunteers call them and refer them to different resources across the city so that they are living the best possible life with the best resources available to them. One component of this campaign is that there is a social interaction with the vets. Research shows that a lot of veterans tend to be more isolated and find it hard to relate (to others in their circle), so this contact is important,” informs Kayla.
Once volunteers show interest in participating in Mission Vet Check, they undergo training for these interactions and CallHub. Kayla currently has a contact list of 15-16,000 vets, and the phone banks are organized every Wednesday between 2:30 and 4.30 pm.
Essentially, a team of volunteers calls ~800 contacts in 90 minutes (the remaining 30 minutes are reserved for stand-ups and debriefings). They use CallHub’s auto-dialer for this campaign.
New York Cares’ phonebank on CallHub
A team discussion. Photo credits: Kayla Lawrence-White.
While the campaign itself is pretty straightforward and well-organized, some of the main painpoints that CallHub could solve for NY Cares were:
- Removing the friction of agents manually scrolling scripts (with Branching scripts)
- Adding new contacts to the list without creating multiple calling campaigns
- A live and customizable analytics dashboard to track progress.
Branching scripts for smooth conversations
Volunteers begin the conversation by confirming the contact’s status. Since this is a cold list procured from DVS, there could be some errors, like a person might still be serving in the military, may have moved or even passed away. The first branch of the conversation starts here. From there, what kind of resources they need (if any) and finally, if they want to opt-in to NY Cares’ texting or email lists.
Previously, such scripts were written in a linear fashion, with signposts for each section to where volunteers would scroll based on replies (e.g., move to section R2 if contact needs housing resources). Firstly, this would increase the pause time in the conversation, making it less organic. Secondly, it opened up space for errors.
CallHub’s branching scripts solve this issue. Managers add “branches” for each option to a question, and when an agent checks an option, the software automatically displays that branch as the next thing in the script.
“Branching scripts help deter the volunteers from being confused. We don’t want them to say the wrong thing or read from the wrong portion. The branching scripts just say “in response to this, this is what you should say,” so it leaves no room for them to decide the information,” Kayla tells us.
Pause campaigns, don’t duplicate, to add contacts
New York Cares continually get new contacts from DVS that they must add to their phonebanking campaigns. Since they essentially have to only append the contact list for these campaigns (and make no other changes), it doesn’t make sense to duplicate the existing campaign and end up in a confused dashboard of multiple identical campaigns.
On CallHub, you can simply pause a campaign, add a contact list to it and resume.
“There were a few times when we ran out of contacts but we were able to pause an ongoing campaign and upload new contacts so the volunteers could continue,” says Kayla.
For Kayla this is a breeze since their campaign is active for two hours every Wednesday. But even for a higher volume campaign, this takes only a few minutes (even if your contact list runs in tens of thousands!) so you can continue calling without hiccups.
Other call-enhancing features that help NY Cares
- Auto-dialer
Kayla sets the auto-dialer call rate to 2:1 (2 dials per initiation) since their answer rate is less than 50% (typical for a cold list). This ensures a quick turnaround of calls and keeps the two hours engaged in conversations.
- Drop voicemail
As previously mentioned, not every call is answered. For the “dropped” calls, Kayla enables the “play answering machine audio” and drops a voicemail including contact details if the vet wants to get back in touch with NY Cares.
- Patch-through calling
Kayla tells us that agents sometimes encounter questions that they are not equipped to answer. For these instances, CallHub has a patch-through-calling feature. Agents connect the contact to a “crisis manager” who is ready for such instances.
Live analytics dashboard
CallHub recently went live with a live analytics dashboard that managers can customize based on their requirements. Currently, the campaign goals of NY Cares are outreach numbers and the number of resources provided. Our customer success team is helping Kayla set up the custom dashboard so she can track these goals in one place and see their live progress.
The Mission Vet Check project is set to run through June 2024. Depending on the success rates of the different strategies they adopted in these 6 months, New York Cares may carry them forward in other projects. We are excited to continue working with them and Kayla for different campaigns, all for the greater good!
