Before the overhaul, the department managed more than 20 public phone numbers, while individual offices and employees had distributed many more direct numbers to residents over time. Customers frequently found themselves transferred between offices and repeating information to multiple representatives.
TDHS consolidated those operations into a single omnichannel contact center environment tied directly to the ServiceNow platform. Whether residents engage through phone, chat, web forms or virtual agents, interactions are now linked to a single customer record.
“That’s the first time we had a 360-degree view of our customer,” Fusting says.
The agency also integrated ServiceNow with its telephony environment and recently implemented generative AI-powered call summarization tools that automatically create notes and documentation after calls.
Fusting says during the initial pilot rollout, the AI summarization capability reduced after-call wrap-up time by 55%, saving agents roughly 90 seconds per call. As the capability scaled across all Tier 1 agents, average wrap-up time stabilized at approximately 25% across the broader team, while still delivering meaningful time savings.
Automation has also improved self-service capabilities. TDHS’s virtual agent can answer case-specific questions for identity-verified users, including information about benefit amounts, application status and interview scheduling.
Perhaps the biggest surprise, Fusting says, was how readily residents embraced digital engagement.
“We have about 1.6 million customer portal accounts today,” she says. “We are adding, on average, approximately 20,000 a month. Adoption rate has been our biggest surprise.”
READ MORE: Cloud accelerates time-to-value for citizen services.
Better Manage Automated Services
The same modernization themes are emerging in local government as cities look to automate internal operations and improve citizen services.
In Raleigh, N.C., CIO Mark Wittenburg says the city uses ServiceNow to manage everything from IT asset inventories and incident management to AI-driven service automation.
Raleigh now uses generative AI to automate ticket summaries and documentation, saving up to two minutes per IT ticket. The city has also deployed an AI-powered chatbot and is developing what Wittenburg described as a “zero-touch help desk agent” capable of handling routine service requests under human supervision.
“We now have a new help desk employee that can handle tickets and queues just like a human can,” he says.
But Wittenburg emphasized that AI success depends heavily on trustworthy data and strong knowledge management. As Raleigh deployed AI tools, the city discovered inconsistencies in older documentation and service records that had to be corrected before systems could consistently generate reliable responses.
Looking ahead, the city hopes to extend those capabilities beyond internal IT operations into broader citizen services through its Ask Raleigh platform, potentially automating requests such as pothole reporting and routing issues to the correct agencies automatically.
For Dilley, that evolution represents a larger opportunity for government modernization. Agencies that rethink fragmented processes and build trusted digital foundations can increase workforce capacity while making services easier for residents to navigate.
And in many cases, he says, the technology ultimately gives public employees more time to focus on the people they serve.
