Reinvent Lightning Session: Transforming 211 with Amazon Connect

The State of the Social Safety Net

• Orange County, CA faces significant challenges despite its affluence:
  • 1 million residents on Medicare (out of 3.5 million total population)
  • 7,322 individuals facing homelessness, with 48% homeless for the first time in the past 12 months

What is 211?

• 211 is a social services directory and information hub for each community
• 211 in Orange County handles over 1,100 service providers and 3,000 programs
• The social services ecosystem is highly fractured and disconnected, making it difficult for individuals to navigate

The Solution: Amazon Connect

• United Way of Orange County acquired their local 211 and deployed Amazon Connect to solve key challenges:
  1. Lack of reporting and insights into resident sentiment, agent productivity, and conversational insights
  • Leveraged Amazon Connect's Contact Lens to analyze conversations, sentiment, and trends
  2. Lack of forecasting and scheduling tools leading to higher wait times and lower customer experience
  • Utilized Amazon Connect's forecasting and scheduling capabilities to optimize agent schedules and capacity planning
  3. Manual quality assessment process making it difficult to evaluate agent performance and customer experience
  • Automated agent performance evaluations using Amazon Connect's machine learning-powered analytics

The Architecture

• Detailed diagram showcasing the integration of Amazon Connect with other AWS services (Lex, Transcribe, DynamoDB, S3, Quicksight, etc.) to enable a seamless 211 experience

The Results

• Improved call center specialist productivity and customer experience
• 10% improvement over operational benchmarks
• Streamlined data integration and visualization through the use of AWS services

The Future

• Potential for replication and expansion of the solution to other United Way organizations
• Leveraging data and insights to further enhance the ecosystem of care coordination