Success Stories

The Problem

After an abrupt halt of travelers (due to COVID-19), it was time for Hawaii to welcome visitors again. In an effort to do so safely, a pre-travel testing program was established but with it, a few challenges arose.

• The call center that accepted travel-related questions was unable to keep up with the volume of calls.
• The call center was only available during typical work hours (8 am – 4 pm).
• The cost to maintain the call center was very high — $300k a month.
• With such a limited bandwidth, agents were only able to check-in on 10% of travelers to ensure they were quarantining properly.

The Solution

The State of Hawaii’s Office of Enterprise Technology Services quickly developed the Safe Travels Digital Platform. The platform provided a simple way for travelers to store necessary details such as their arrival date, departure date, quarantine status, and more. The platform also incorporated a voice and chatbot to make it easy to use.

The Result

The Safe Travels Digital Platform added significant ease to Hawaii’s pre-travel testing program.

• After seeing a decrease in call volume, call center agents were then able to contact every traveler (at least once a day) to ensure they were quarantining — a 100% follow up.
• The platform was multilingual and could easily be used by those who spoke different languages.
• Agents from the initial call center were shifted to a second call center that would only field questions that the bots were not able to assist with.