AWS Public Sector Blog
How South Carolina DSS modernized 19 contact centers to improve benefits delivery with Amazon Connect
Social services agencies serve some of society’s most vulnerable members. When someone calls a hotline to report suspected child neglect or to complete an eligibility interview for nutrition assistance, that call needs to go through. Service interruptions don’t just create inconvenience—they can delay this essential support or prevent urgent situations from being addressed.
The South Carolina Department of Social Services (SCDSS) faced exactly this challenge. Aging legacy telephony systems were causing dropped calls, locking agents out of their workstations, and leaving supervisors with little visibility into performance. Working with Amazon Web Services (AWS), SCDSS modernized 19 contact centers and two interactive voice response (IVR) systems, transforming how the agency connects with the one in six South Carolinians it serves.
Fragmented systems created reliability gaps for critical services
SCDSS is the state’s biggest cabinet agency, administering the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), child welfare services, and more. The agency’s contact centers handled approximately 2.45 million interactions in 2025, with the Economic Services Interview Center alone receiving between 2,200 and 2,500 calls each day.
Before modernization, SCDSS relied on a patchwork of telephony systems and several smaller call center providers, creating a fragmented service environment that made it difficult to consistently serve South Carolina constituents. Calls would drop unexpectedly, agents would get locked out of systems, and technical issues affecting one agent would not trigger automatic rollover to the next available person.
The stakes were particularly high for the agency’s 24/7 abuse and neglect hotline, which receives roughly 520 calls per day. “It’s critical that you don’t miss a call and have agents ready to take that call,” said Jose Encarnacion, director of IT for SCDSS. In that context, even a brief interruption could have serious consequences. The department needed a platform that was secure, scalable, and most importantly, reliable.
A focused pilot built confidence for statewide rollout
SCDSS had watched other state agencies deploy Amazon Connect during the COVID-19 pandemic to stand up emergency response lines. When the service became available through the state contract in late 2022, Encarnacion saw an opportunity to solve the department’s reliability problems while gaining access to a broader ecosystem of cloud services.
AWS joined the SCDSS staff for an on-site immersion day to configure one contact center as a proof of concept. The teams had budgeted five days but completed the core configuration in just two, initially focusing on an internal IT helpdesk supporting the agency’s child support system.
The helpdesk went live in December 2022. “We knew it worked, we knew it was reliable, and we knew people liked it,” said Encarnacion. “From that point forward, it was just about scaling.”
Over the following two and a half years, SCDSS migrated all 19 contact centers and both IVR systems to Amazon Connect, completing nearly all the work internally without relying on outside professional services. Josh Emory, director of admin systems at SCDSS, credited the service’s visual call flow designer and text-to-speech capabilities powered by Amazon Polly for making simple updates. “If we want to change a voice prompt for an IVR, we don’t have to do a recording,” said Emory. “We just type in the change.” senior system architect at SCDSS, Bogdan Filip, managed the cloud platform side, developing AWS Lambda functions and Amazon DynamoDB services to support the call flow.
AI-powered tools give supervisors real-time visibility
Alongside its core contact center functionality, SCDSS has adopted several AWS services that have fundamentally changed how supervisors manage their teams and how the agency engages with constituents.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Powered Conversational Analytics with Amazon Connect generates call summaries, flags sentiment, and identifies key phrases. Supervisors can review an AI-generated summary and go directly to key moments, rather than listening to the entire 45-minute call. The agency has also configured the tool to flag specific keywords, automatically tagging interactions for quality control review when a caller mentions “zero income” or “self-employed” during a SNAP interview.
“It’s made our quality assurance work incredibly efficient,” said Encarnacion. “We can find the calls that need closer attention without manually reviewing thousands of interactions.”
The agency uses Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) to send mass text campaigns through a verified short code. This capability proved especially valuable during Hurricane Helene in September 2024, when SCDSS sent roughly 300,000 text messages to notify SNAP households about disaster replacement benefits. SCDSS also implemented an automated callback feature that lets callers keep their place in the queue without staying on the line, so they can hang up rather than wait on hold. When an agent becomes available, the system calls the constituent back from a branded caller ID enabled through AWS Partner First Orion.
Faster benefits delivery and fewer missed connections
Since completing the migration, SCDSS has seen measurable improvements in service delivery. The timeliness of SNAP application processing within federal requirements improved from 84% to over 95% for six consecutive months in 2025. Previously, applicants would wait several days for a mailed notice instructing them to call for their eligibility interview. Now, they receive a text message the morning after they apply, helping speed up the entire process.
When constituents do call, they reach an agent. The system’s automatic rollover means that if one agent is unavailable, the call routes to the next person in the queue. Combined with the callback option, this has virtually eliminated complaints about missed calls to critical services.
“When people want to reach DSS, they can reach us,” said Encarnacion. “That was our goal.”
Agents across SCDSS have also embraced the change. Single sign-on integration means they can start taking calls immediately after logging in to their workstations, without having to enter separate credentials. Supervisors use real-time dashboards to monitor call volumes across centers and shift resources as needed. The transcription and summary features have reduced the time spent on post-call documentation.
Expanding video calling and conversational AI
SCDSS continues to expand its use of the service. In September 2025, the agency launched video calling for SNAP quality control interviews, meeting a new federal requirement. The team is also developing an AI-powered solution to generate case notes from abuse and neglect hotline calls and exploring Amazon Lex to build IVRs that feel more conversational and respond to natural speech.
For other state agencies considering a similar modernization effort, Encarnacion offers straightforward guidance. “Pilot it first. Come in with a well-scoped use case, work with the AWS team, and see what the product can do. Once you see it, you’ll understand what’s possible.”
To learn how AWS can help your agency modernize contact center operations, reach out to the AWS Public Sector team today.