Case Study: Code for America achieves faster, more empathetic access to public benefits with Intercom Conversational Support

Code for America uses conversational support to show up with empathy for their clients

Code for America is a nonprofit that builds digital tools to help people apply for public benefits, but faced a fragmented, county‑by‑county system, long application processes and a 300% surge in support demand during the pandemic (peaking at ~9,000 weekly conversations). They needed to provide timely, empathetic help at scale while capturing user feedback to improve government services.

Using Intercom’s Conversational Support (Team Inbox, Outbound Messages, Custom Bots and Resolution Bot) the team combined instant multilingual self‑service with fast, human follow‑ups and feedback loops to agencies. The results: application time in Minnesota fell by 80% (to about 12 minutes), GetCalFresh has helped 6M+ people access or maintain SNAP benefits, MNbenefits processed ~25K applications, and rapid response times were maintained through the surge.

Code for America

Arlene Corbin Lewis

Chief Communications and Marketing Officer