Helping CDC improve citizen access to vaccines

Key takeaways

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to rapidly disseminate information about community options for vaccines to improve public health outcomes. In response, Maximus partnered with the White House, U.S. Digital Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to implement the CDC Vaccination Assistance Hotline (CDC-VAX), serving the public at state and local levels while reducing costs and providing exceptional customer experience (CX).

Situation

The CDC is the nation’s leading science-based, data-driven government organization, helping fight disease in all forms through reliable and consistent health information. The COVID-19 pandemic made CDC’s work at state and local levels critical with the public needing immediate access to information about vaccines and where they could get them.

Challenge

The CDC needed to rapidly implement scalable digital telephony solutions to handle hundreds of thousands of calls and millions of texts per hour. This required a partner with deep experience in building modern contact center solutions and data/systems surveillance.

Solution

The CDC tapped trusted partner Maximus to provide an integrated, efficient, and cost-effective omni-channel solution, CDC-VAX, including:

Assessment of the CDC’s objectives swiftly to ensure a strategic approach aligned with agency goals and national priorities
A suite of services for information management that met all technical and security standards
Integration of innovative technologies, including a customized, automated intelligent voice assistant (IVA) for call containment to enable higher overall call volumes
Real-time support and enhanced CX by enabling customer service reps (CSRs) to connect with the public on their terms, including voice call, e-mail, text, and WhatsApp
Extensive IT experience, research expertise, and modernization knowledge

Leveraging industry-leading technologies to streamline appeals.

How We Did It

Maximus achieved success with CDC-VAX by:

Leveraging a foundation of trusted partnership with transformative customer service solutions and expert services
Implementing coaching tools and resources for supervisors and CSRs to improve performance
Integrating digital automation tools for service recovery and improved customer satisfaction
Conducting qualitative research for employee and customer feedback and continuous improvement

Results

Provided the public with targeted vaccine location information in their communities
Scheduled 10K+ vaccine appointments from June 2021-May 2022 for individuals requiring assistance connecting with their providers in or near their communities
Connected customers with rideshare and free childcare options
Managed distribution of free COVID-19 test kits through the U.S. Postal Service
Reduced call-related costs by $6M
Achieved a 99% average Customer Satisfaction Score
Delivered 2.5M texts and 550K+ WhatsApp messages

Your influence prevails and will continue to make our services better.

CDC-INFO operations leadership