WHO THEY ARE

A lifeline for New York’s veterans

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 they need help with. New York Cares has been running the phonebanking campaign with CallHub since November 2023.

HOW THEY USE CALLHUB

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.

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 15,000 to 16,000 vets, and the phone banks are organized every Wednesday between 2:30 and 4:30 pm. A team of volunteers calls around 800 contacts in 90 minutes, with the remaining 30 minutes reserved for stand-ups and debriefings.

The main painpoints that CallHub solved for NY Cares were removing the friction of agents manually scrolling scripts, adding new contacts without creating multiple campaigns, and having a live 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. A person might still be serving in the military, may have moved, or may have passed away.

The first branch of the conversation starts here. From there, the script guides agents through what kind of resources are needed and whether the vet wants to opt in to NY Cares’ texting or email lists.

Previously, such scripts were written in a linear fashion, with signposts directing volunteers to scroll to different sections based on replies. This increased pause time in the conversation and opened up space for errors.

CallHub’s branching scripts solve this: managers add branches for each option, and when an agent selects one, the software automatically displays that branch as the next step.

Pause campaigns, don’t duplicate, to add contacts

New York Cares continually gets new contacts from DVS that they must add to their phonebanking campaigns. Since they essentially have to only append the contact list and make no other changes, it doesn’t make sense to duplicate the existing campaign and end up with a confused dashboard of multiple identical campaigns.

On CallHub, you can simply pause a campaign, add a contact list to it, and resume.

Other features that help NY Cares

Kayla sets the auto-dialer call rate to 2:1 since their answer rate is less than 50%, typical for a cold list. For dropped calls, she enables voicemail drop with contact details so vets can call back if interested.

And for calls where agents encounter questions they can’t answer, CallHub’s patch-through calling connects the contact directly to a crisis manager on standby.

CallHub’s live analytics dashboard lets Kayla track outreach numbers and resources provided in real time, all in one place, customized to her campaign goals.

THE IMPACT

Reaching veterans, one call at a time

800 calls per session. Every Wednesday. Thousands of veterans checked in on, connected to resources, and reminded that someone cares.

The Mission Vet Check project is a reminder that technology and human connection aren’t at odds. With the right platform handling the operational complexity, volunteers can focus entirely on the conversation that matters – the one with the veteran on the other end of the line.