Case Study: Cabarrus County Department of Human Services improves client service with Northwoods

Cabarrus County Provides Superior Service with Modernized Lobby

Cabarrus County Department of Human Services partnered with Northwoods to address a confusing lobby, long client wait times, heavy workloads, and inconsistent manual processes that were hurting service delivery. The agency had fallen back on spreadsheets, tick sheets, and manual client routing instead of using Northwoods’ Compass Appointments software as intended, creating frustration for clients, caseworkers, and management.

Northwoods performed a Health Check and helped Cabarrus County DHS redesign the lobby, add a greeter, upgrade Compass Appointments, automate walk-in distribution with round robin rules, and improve communication and SOPs. The results included shorter lobby waits, better visibility into client traffic, improved workload balance, and faster application processing, with caseworkers saving 1-2 hours per day and the agency repurposing 1 FTE, equal to 40 hours per week.

Cabarrus County Department of Human Services

Ben Rose

Director of Human Services