How South Carolina’s Talking Book Services uses Amazon Connect to bring readers closer to the stories they love

South Carolina State Library’s Talking Book Services has been putting books into the hands—and ears—of people with print disabilities since 1931. Now, with the help of Amazon Connect, the small team of reader advisors serving 4,200 patrons across the state is making those deeply personal connections easier than ever.

In 1931, Congress established the National Library Service to serve veterans in every US state and territory who had visual disabilities resulting from their military service. Nearly a century later, the South Carolina State Library’s Talking Book Services program provides reading materials in digital audio and braille formats to patrons statewide. This library program is available to any South Carolina resident with a visual impairment, physical disability, or reading difference, such as dyslexia, that makes it difficult to use traditional print materials.

Unlike most modern library services, Talking Book Services assists its patrons primarily by phone. Five reader advisors each field up to 30 calls per day, personally setting up accounts and queues of reading material, assigning specialized equipment, and troubleshooting app or equipment difficulties. A call might be a quick request for the latest mystery or a book request along with a bit of conversation with a patron who just wants someone to talk to.

“We try not to limit that interaction when we don’t have to,” says Jennifer Wilson, director of Talking Book Services at the South Carolina State Library. “We don’t want to rush people. We value that ability to connect with them.”

When the phone is essential to the mission, the system behind it matters. And for years, the team knew theirs wasn’t keeping pace.

Why Amazon Connect

Their previous setup offered no menu options, no call routing, and no advanced features like voicemail transcription. The team explored several alternatives, but each came with a mass of required features that created unnecessary complexity for patrons who need simplicity above all.

It was Paul Harmon, IT director at the South Carolina State Library, who suggested the team consider Amazon Connect. The appeal was immediate: a cloud-based contact center that the team could set up quickly and tailor precisely to their needs.

The simplicity of getting started was a deciding factor. The intuitive drag-and-drop contact flow of Amazon Connect means a team doesn’t need deep technical expertise to build their phone workflows. Single sign-on integration made the transition seamless for reader advisors. They sign in to Amazon Connect the same way they access their other work tools, with no separate credentials to manage. For a small team of five advisors focused on patron support rather than IT, this ease of use is essential.

Designing for accessibility

Working with implementation partner SMX, the Talking Book Services team designed a phone experience around one guiding principle: accessibility first.

That meant minimizing menu steps and ensuring voice commands could navigate the entire system. It also meant paying close attention to something many organizations never think about: the sound of the voice answering the phone.

“We chose a male voice because lower pitches tend to be easier to hear,” Wilson explains. “We were able to slow it down just a little bit. We were able to specifically say what we wanted our greeting to be, keep it simple, keep those options clear.”

The flexibility of Amazon Connect made this level of customization straightforward. Rather than adapting to fit a rigid phone platform, the team was able to build the exact experience their patrons needed—from the voice and pacing of the interactive voice response (IVR) prompts to the structure of the menu options.

More than a library—a lifeline

For many patrons, Talking Book Services isn’t only a convenience. It’s a connection to the world. This became more apparent than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wilson explains, “During lockdown, when all of the reader advisors were working from home, they set up a process to call every one of our four-thousand-plus patrons to check in on them and assure them we were still here and able to help them. Some of our patrons were very isolated, and our call was one of their only outside contacts. Everyone on the Talking Book Services team felt really good about being able to offer that contact and continuity of service at a time when so much of normal life completely stopped. Our patrons told us over and over how much they appreciated that effort.”

It’s not an isolated story. Wilson and her team of five reader advisors regularly receive calls and notes from family members describing the program as life-changing. They’ve formed relationships that span decades.

Wilson doesn’t hesitate when asked about the value of what her team provides. “Being a part of the South Carolina State Library makes it possible to provide completely free service to qualifying residents all across South Carolina,” Wilson says. “We love helping our fellow South Carolinians access a rich and rewarding reading life when they might have thought that opportunity was gone forever.”

Voicemail transcription changes the game

Though the system has been live for only a few weeks, the impact on daily operations is already clear. The feature that has won the most enthusiastic praise from the reader advisors is voicemail transcription, the ability to simultaneously listen to and read a patron’s voicemail message.

“That is their favorite thing ever,” Wilson says. “Having the ability to read a message at the same time we are listening to it helps us provide more accurate and timely service—that’s a win-win.”

The team is also exploring Bluetooth headsets to match their workflow. Unlike a traditional call center, reader advisors aren’t desk-bound. They’re up and down throughout the day, pulling patron records, visiting the mailroom, and making copies. The flexibility to take a call while walking back from the copier adds another layer of mobility to their day.

Scaling to reach every eligible child in South Carolina

Wilson sees the current implementation as only the beginning. She’s already thinking about potential integrations with their system that could streamline the enrollment process or help reader advisors set up genre preferences more efficiently during onboarding calls.

But the most ambitious goal on the horizon is growth, specifically, reaching school-age children across the state. With recent eligibility expansions to include people with learning disabilities like dyslexia and ADHD, Talking Book Services is actively working to connect with students who have qualifying conditions and could benefit enormously from accessible audiobooks. Many of these families have never heard of the program.

This is where the scalability of Amazon Connect becomes critical. As outreach to school districts succeeds and referrals increase, the team needs a phone system that can absorb growing call volume without requiring new hardware, additional phone lines, or extra licenses. The Amazon Connect pay-as-you-go model means costs scale proportionally with demand. The team pays only for the minutes they use, whether they’re serving 4,200 patrons or 42,000.

Beyond scalability, Amazon Connect automation capabilities open new possibilities for supporting this growth. Automated enrollment confirmations, self-service menu options for common requests like checking the status of a mailed cartridge, and intelligent call routing could all help a small team of five advisors manage a much larger patron base without sacrificing the personal relationships that define the service.

“We have the opportunity to enroll and serve patrons their entire life,” Wilson says. “From the grandparent who has lost their vision to their grandchild with dyslexia.”

The goal is to make sure all generations of eligible readers can find their way to that first phone call, and that when they do, someone is ready to answer.

To learn more about Talking Book Services at the South Carolina State Library or to apply for service, visit South Carolina Talking Book Services. To learn how Amazon Connect helps organizations of all sizes build accessible, scalable contact experiences, visit the Amazon Connect product page.