5 Million Customer Calls Marked by Child Support's CARE Call Center

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Library: News Release

For Media Inquiries, Contact:

Renee Banks -- Oklahoma Child Support Services, Center for Customer Services
Phone: (405) 522-6188
e-mail: Renee.Banks@okdhs.org

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma Child Support Services Customer Assistance Response Effort Call Center marked an important milestone this week. OCSS officials announced the CARE Call Center had answered five million calls as of June 2.
Customer calls to CARE are routed first through an Interactive Voice Response system which is available 24 hours a day, seven-days-a-week. The IVR handles approximately 66 percent of the incoming calls. The remaining 34 percent are routed to the customer service representatives in CARE, who are available to answer calls Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Historically, CARE has answered about 2,400 calls per day, with Monday being the busiest day.

Child Support founded CARE in 2001 to give better overall service to their customers. Before CARE was established, custodial and non-custodial persons called the district offices to get answers to routine questions about child support services. Establishing CARE to handle those routine questions has freed up the case workers to handle more complex child support related issues.

CARE first began answering calls back in 2001 for the El Reno Child Support Office. CARE was rolled out statewide for all district offices in January 2003. The four millionth call was received in November 2008.

When fully-staffed, CARE has about 75 CSRs handling incoming calls.

“Providing quick, accurate information is our goal”, said Barbara Millikan, CARE contract monitor and liaison.

Wait times to speak with a CSR average 30 seconds. Information on applying for CSR (staff assistant II) positions can be found at https://jobs.ou.edu/ (Link opens in new window).

OCSS enhances the well-being of children through its mission to establish, monitor and enforce a reliable source of support for the families it serves. The division is responsible for more than 199,000 active child support cases. More information about OCSS programs and services can be found online at www.okdhs.org/programsandservices/cse/.

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