Disadvantaged people are often frustrated in their attempts to handle pressing legal matters. By moving its contact cent
CASE STUDY: MARYLAND LEGAL AID
EarthLink’s Hosted Contact Center helps Maryland’s neediest citizens and military vets defend their civil legal rights
A customer experience success story Late in 2014, Maryland Legal Aid received a grant to establish a legal assistance hotline exclusively for Maryland’s military veterans. The hotline, called the Joining Forces Project, had an ambitious launch date. To meet the deadline, Maryland Legal Aid had to move quickly to upgrade its contact center capabilities. So the non-profit legal services organization, with headquarters in Baltimore, turned to its trusted network and voice services partner, EarthLink. The EarthLink team recommended adding their cloud-based Hosted Contact Center (HCC, for short) to the integrated voice, data and security services they were already using. Two months later, the Joining Forces Project hotline launched on schedule— the first of several milestones achieved with the help of HCC. “No other approach would have enabled us to meet the project’s hard deadline,” said Patrick Gregory, Director of IT at Maryland Legal Aid.
The service payoff
The business payoff
It’s All About the Customer Experience
Disadvantaged people are often frustrated in their attempts to handle pressing legal matters. By moving its contact center to the cloud, Maryland Legal Aid is able to be more responsive to the state’s veterans, as well as provide a smoother customer experience for everyone seeking assistance.
HCC’s hosted architecture made installation easy and offers flexibility to add users and functionality as needs grow. Advanced reporting and analytics provide insight into service levels and performance, which is essential in a non-profit environment where outcomes are critical to ongoing funding.
Unlike calls to contact centers in a for-profit enterprise, where the goal is often based on speed, Maryland Legal Aid is focused on providing the best possible level of support. Their callers are typically people who are low-income and lack access or the ability to pay for legal services. They need help in complex, stressful matters including elder care, child custody, domestic violence, bankruptcy, evictions, and barriers to employment, housing, and government benefits. Using HCC, Maryland Legal Aid is able to focus on its mission to connect each of them to the help they need to protect the rights they deserve.
Challenge
Results
Maryland Legal Aid provides civil legal support to nearly 100,000 Maryland residents per year through 12 offices and three district self-help centers. Their staff of 300 is assisted by a pool of pro bono attorneys who volunteer their time. The organization needed a way for screeners to seamlessly route calls to anyone, anywhere, including these outside attorneys. They also needed other essential functionality, such as Interactive Voice Response, call recording, and automated call back.
After initial screening, agents can now route calls to internal staff or to outside attorneys. “That’s been a tremendous advantage that has made our lives much easier,” Gregory noted.
Solution IT Director Patrick Gregory saw the grant for a statewide veterans’ hotline as the catalyst to drive major upgrades to Maryland Legal Aid’s contact center capabilities. Working closely with a multi-functional project team and partners at EarthLink, he was able to integrate Hosted Contact Center with existing processes and systems, including EarthLink’s Hosted Voice. Following the launch of HCC to support the new Joining Forces Project hotline (which Maryland residents can reach at 443.863.4040), the team also completed the implementation of HCC in their second largest office in Landover, MD.
Agents have a new call-back capability, so callers don’t have to hold during high-volume periods. The organization can also use call recordings; an essential functionality for legal services.
Future Gregory sees potential for even greater use of HCC—which will result in new levels of reporting and enhanced customer satisfaction metrics. “Maryland Legal Aid is here to support all who can’t afford or access an attorney; to be their voice,” Gregory said, noting that EarthLink has been a great partner helping that voice to be heard. “Technology enables us to be creative in responding to changing needs,” he said. “Since we began working with EarthLink in 2010, they have provided an excellent set of solutions. We look to EarthLink to continue delivering services that give us innovative ways to achieve our mission.”
About Us EarthLink is a leading network services provider dedicated to delivering great customer experiences in a cloud connected world. We help thousands of specialty retailers, restaurants, financial institutions, healthcare providers, professional service firms, local governments, and consumers securely establish critical connections in the cloud. More at www.earthlink.com, @earthlink, on LinkedIn and Google+. © 2016 EarthLink. Trademarks are property of their respective owners. All rights reserved. MKTPRINT-266
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We are light years beyond where we were. We have benefited greatly from new capabilities that we didn’t have before. Plus, the new platform positions the organization to gain all the benefits of a centralized call center in the coming years.
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Patrick Gregory Director of IT Maryland Legal Aid
Contact us at
1-877-355-1501
[email protected] www.earthlink.com
