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ServiceNow Public Sector Tennessee, United States

Tennessee Department of Human Services

Customer Service Automation

TDHS needed to modernize how citizens applied for benefits and got support because separate service teams, lost data trails, and manual application checks slowed social-service delivery during emergencies and routine benefits processing alike.

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3 days to stand up essential worker platform
33% of Virtual Agent traffic occurs outside business hours
Around 380K chats are handled by Virtual Agent every year
Equivalent of approximately 22 call center agents

Reported impact

Business outcome

TDHS stood up an essential-worker portal in three days, handles about 380K Virtual Agent chats a year, serves one-third of that volume outside business hours, delivers capacity equivalent to about 22 call-center agents, and moved case decisions from monthslong backlogs to a couple of days or at most two weeks.

  • Customer Experience
  • Productivity Improvement
  • Speed to Market

Solution

TDHS built a citizen-facing support model on ServiceNow Customer Service Management so applications, status tracking, chatbot conversations, and casework could move through one customer record. The department first proved the platform by standing up emergency portals quickly for tornado and childcare-benefit programs, then expanded it into a broader constituent portal where Tennesseans can self-serve information, submit applications, and see case-specific dashboards from any device. Virtual Agent handles high-volume questions through the website, Facebook page, customer portal, and telephony integration, while preserving the conversation history when a live agent takes over. Behind the scenes, ServiceNow automates application-completeness checks, emails citizens if more information is needed, and routes ready cases to the correct worker. That shift turned benefits delivery from a fragmented, program-centric process into a customer-centric workflow with better continuity, faster triage, and much less backlog.

Data flow

Citizens apply or ask questions through the portal, website, Facebook page, or telephony-linked Virtual Agent. ServiceNow keeps those interactions on one customer record, automates completeness checks on submitted applications, notifies citizens when more information is needed, and routes complete cases to workers who continue from the preserved conversation history.

Solution architecture

3 components · 2 layers
  1. Serving
    • Virtual Agent Handles FAQ-style interactions across digital channels and passes context to live agents when escalation is needed.
    • Customer portal Lets constituents apply for benefits, track status, and access case-specific information through self-service.
  2. Orchestration
    • Customer Service Management Provides the citizen portal, case record, and workflow engine for benefits and support services.

Architecture clues

  • Application completeness checks are automated before a caseworker review begins.
  • TDHS uses a single customer record to hold submitted information and application status.
  • The platform preserves chatbot conversation history when escalating to a live agent.

Evidence from the source

Around 380K chats are handled by Virtual Agent every year, the equivalent of approximately 22 call center agents.
By developing a customer portal with ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM), TDHS can now provide its citizens self-service access to information and application processes.
In just three days it was able to set up a second portal to help provide childcare benefits to essential workers.
Previously, it took up to eight hours; now the task has been automated in ServiceNow.
The chatbot conversation that occurred up to that point is retained and transferred to the live agent.
Transparency Evidence & methodology 100/100 reference value · 79% confidence · 1 source

Review how this reference was scored and trace each normalized claim back to its documented source.

01

Scoring methodology

How scores are calculated

Customer Reference Value measures usefulness as a customer reference. Evidence Confidence measures the quality and traceability of available evidence, not independent verification.

Customer reference value100/100
  • Problem clarity20/20
    Measures whether the customer's operational problem is specific enough to compare.
  • Implementation depth25/25
    Rewards named components, data flow, integrations, and architecture detail.
  • Outcome specificity20/20
    Measures whether the reported benefit is concrete rather than a generic claim.
  • Quantified impact25/25
    2 metrics describe measurable impact.
  • Deployment scale10/10
    Rewards evidence of a live or scaled deployment and meaningful integration scope.
Evidence confidence79%
  • Source authority20/25
    The main evidence is an official vendor-published customer story.
  • Claim traceability21/25
    10 of 12 key fields link to a named source.
  • Direct evidence20/20
    5 direct source quotes retained.
  • Date provenance0/10
    The publication date has no documented provenance.
  • Source transparency8/10
    1 source reference document publisher, URL, authority, retrieval, and supported fields.
  • Implementation specificity10/10
    Rewards source-backed components, data flow, quantified impact, and a specific outcome.
02

Traceability

Sources & provenance

Field coverage shows which facts each source supports. Dates are shown only when documented by the source.

  1. ServiceNow

    Tennessee Department of Human Services customer story

    First-party
    https://www.servicenow.com/customers/tennessee-dhs-csm.html
    Source type
    Vendor-published customer story
    Supports
    • Customer
    • Business problem
    • Solution
    • Products
    • Solution components
    • Data flow
    • Integrations
    • technical area
    • use case category
    • Business outcome
    • outcome category
    • Metrics
    • Architecture
    • evidence quotes

Date evidence

  • First archived May 26, 2024 · Internet Archive · Independent First Wayback Machine capture; confirms the page existed by this date, not when it was published.
    Open date source
  • Sitemap last modified Jul 30, 2026 · ServiceNow · Publisher metadata Publisher-reported modification timestamp; not a publication date.
    Open date source
Not separately sourced Industry, Region, Company size. Treat these normalized attributes as lower-confidence until a dedicated source is added.

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