Missouri Department of Social Services: Virtual agents to automate SNAP interview scheduling
Use case typeConversational supportUpdated Jun 13, 2026
The Missouri Department of Social Services used Google Cloud virtual agents to improve access to public assistance services and automate mandatory SNAP interview scheduling. The solution reduced long wait times and manual scheduling work across roughly 125 local resource centers, while allowing residents to reschedule or cancel appointments and ask common application questions.
- Organization
- Missouri Department of Social Services
- Industry
- Public Sector
- Location
- United States
- Published
- January 2024
Reported outcomes
−70%
timeTime & speed
60%quantified impact10%quantified impact
Strategic outcomes
Speed & agilityAutomated SNAP interview schedulingCustomer experience & trustImproved service access for applicantsCustomer experience & trustEnabled self-service appointment changesEmployee experienceImproved agent retention
Catalog median for time & speed deployments: −60% across 727 reported metrics. Compare benchmarks →
Primary read
Use case focus
Showing 3 of 4
- 1Customer service automation
- 2Appointment scheduling
- 3Conversational AI
- The Family Support Division faced high call volumes and long queues, which limited access to assistance for SNAP applicants.
- Staff had to manually check appointment availability across approximately 125 local resource centers.
- The agency needed to reduce resident frustration, improve service access, and ease pressure on contact center staff.
- The state partnered with Google Public Sector, Genesys, and Quantiphi to build an automated intake and scheduling experience on Google Cloud.
- Virtual agents were developed using Contact Center AI to check availability and schedule interviews for in-person or phone appointments.
- The solution allowed residents to cancel or reschedule appointments and provided answers to common questions about the application process and required information.
- Scheduled appointments were fed into Genesys to automate calls at the allocated time.
- The agency also implemented Cloud Load Balancing and operational visibility, analytics, and reporting for contact-center operations.
Technologies
- Average inbound call wait times dropped by 70%.
- Blocked calls due to full queues fell from 60% in 2019 to 10% two years later.
- The virtual agents handled about 32,000 requests per month, with roughly half resolved without a live agent.
- Positive survey results increased immediately after launch.
- Agent retention improved because staff could rotate away from continuous phone handling.
Sources & evidence1
Groundedness: 5/5
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