Case Study: Texting to Personally Engage an Entire District
State Legislator becomes first in Illinois to personally engage with over 65,000 constituents via two-way text message interactions.
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges for legislators in their ability to interact with constituents. This comes at a time when the need for timely, accurate, and personal communications is needed more than ever. In Late April, an Illinois legislator brought forward this problem to iConstituent for assistance.
The office shared with the iConstituent Customer Success team that constituents were confused on how to access state resources, concerned with changing guidelines, and frustrated with not having immediate access to office staff through the office phone lines. Constituents were seeking reassurance that their elected officials were looking out for their needs.
To make matters worse, normal proactive communications strategies were not effective due to the shelter in place order with the rapidly evolving situations. The office had to cancel in person events and mobile office hours. Telephone Town Halls and Direct Mail took at least a one week lead time.
GovTextTM Solution
iConstituent deployed an instance of its GovText platform, hosted securely within the iConstituent Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) platform, in less than 24 hours. GovText offered unique advantages:
- Messages come from local area codes.
- Constituents can respond with comments and requests.
- Offices can setup quick auto responses and also manually handle more complex responses.
- All of the information is tracked back to a full constituent record in GovText.
Real Life Outcomes and Positive Impact
| Instant |
|---|
| Connected with 66,000 constituents, which represents over half of registered voters in the entire district, using the mobile phone data already available in GovText. Messages were sent in less than 20 minutes – around 93% were successfully delivered. |
| Efficient |
|---|
| Almost 85% of responses were handled by automation built within GovText. The constituentwas provided with resources and pointed to a webform to request additional assistance if needed. Constituents heard back within 24 hours because of the ease of use for the staff. |
| Effective |
|---|
| Over 6,000 constituent respones were recieved. Of these respones, 417 constituents had sensitive or complex requests that were escalated for further follow up from the office using the integrated iConstituent CRM functionality. |
In this time of uncertainty, many constituents appreciated the effort and responded that they were comforted by the message. The office was able to build rapport with tens of thousands of constituents by providing reassurance via text message.
Texting also provided a new virtual channel to collect information on concerns that was especially friendly to staff remote work needs. The office was able to efficiently escalate certain requests for additional follow up and agency referral.
Conclusion:
With the challenges of the unique environment your office is operating in, iConstituent is standing by to serve you with our GovText tool as well. All House offices are eligible for a no cost trial. Moving forward, you will receive 20% off when you text your entire district. Pricing starts at 10 cents per constituent.
Hear From Our Partners
“iConstituent has made it possible for me to stay in touch with my constituents during COVID-19 by providing constituent outreach tools. Without in-person events or townhalls, the texting and telephone townhalls have been invaluable and run so effectively by the iConstituent support staff.”
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