Case Study: State of Tennessee achieves 35% increase in citizen satisfaction and $250K annual savings with Zendesk Messaging

State of Tennessee + Zendesk Seamless citizen support

The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development—serving 6.6 million residents and 120,000 businesses—faced a sudden drop in citizen satisfaction amid fragmented contact channels (legacy IVR, separate chat and web forms), high call volume (~20,000 calls/week), and risk of knowledge loss from retiring staff. Leadership needed real-time insight and a way to modernize service without heavy IT overhead.

The department implemented Zendesk Support, Guide, Chat, and Talk to centralize contacts, capture institutional knowledge, add voice agents, and integrate via APIs for real-time KPIs. The omnichannel solution drove a 35% increase in CSAT (62.4% to 84.2%), ~90% first-touch resolution, $250K in annual maintenance savings, reduced new-hire onboarding from six months to six weeks, and improved ticket deflection and faster citizen support.

State of Tennessee

Joseph Garcia

Director of Customer Success