Green County, NY Case Study
How EVA Transformed Agency Operations, Timeliness, and Staff Well-Being
Greene County Department of Social Services partnered with TipCo to deploy EVA, an AI-powered virtual assistant that reversed a post-COVID operational crisis and restored staff capacity across a lean, rural agency.
Cases fell behind, error rates climbed, and morale suffered.
After COVID, Greene County DSS faced a 27% eligibility vacancy rate, collapsing timeliness scores, and staff pulled off caseloads just to answer phones. Public assistance cases were opened on time only 52% of the time, SNAP timeliness sat at 55%, and nearly every eligibility worker was logging mandatory overtime weekly for over two years. Cases fell behind, error rates climbed, and morale suffered.
When the COVID-19 pandemic subsided, Greene County DSS did not simply bounce back. Like many agencies across the country, it faced a wave of retirements and staff departures, leaving a 27% vacancy rate on the eligibility side. The phones rang constantly, cases stacked up, and the workers who remained were stretched to the breaking point.
Commissioner Kira Pospesel, a registered nurse turned social services leader who has run the agency since 2004, watched the situation deteriorate despite every effort to contain it.
“Everything I did seemed to make things worse. I kept putting people back on the phones to take the messages, and the messages kept building up. The complaints kept building up. Any solution in any direction I turned, I just made the problem worse.”
Kira Pospesel
Commissioner, Greene County DSS
The numbers confirmed what staff were experiencing every day. Public assistance cases were opened within the required timeframe only 52% of the time. SNAP timeliness sat at 55%. Cases more than 60 days late accounted for 19% of the public assistance caseload and 24% of SNAP. And to try to keep pace, nearly every eligibility worker was working overtime, every Wednesday evening, for more than two years.
Director of Eligibility Laura Becker, who has been with the agency for more than 30 years, describes the domino effect created: “We would have to pull examiners and put them out front. So, then the examiners could not do their work the way they needed to do their work. Plus, we were short-staffed… our error rates went up because the apps were not touched in a timely manner.”
Principal Social Welfare Examiner Stacey Smith, who oversees temporary assistance, SNAP, employment, and daycare units, put it simply: “Everything was just becoming very overwhelming for the workers and the supervisors. We all fell behind. Cases weren't being opened, issues weren’t being addressed timely, which then resulted in clients making more frequent phone calls.”
For Medicaid Supervisor Maureen Grupe, even the simplest calls compounded the pressure: “Just those little mundane questions—what’s your fax number? What are your hours? When can I see my worker? When you’re the person on the phones for the day and six of your phone calls are just about the fax number and the address, it really takes off when you’re trying to work on a case.”
52%
Public Assistance cases opened on time
55%
SNAP cases opened on time
27%
Agency vacancy rate
The TipCo team sat down with Pospesel and answered every question honestly, including the hard, but important, ones about compliance and data privacy.
Greene County signed its contract with TipCo in June 2024 and spent time working with TipCo to build something that would genuinely work for their staff and residents, not rushing to a launch date. Pospesel handled the regulatory paperwork (three full binders’ worth) so her team could stay focused on keeping the agency running. Stacey Smith and Maureen Grupe led the testing phase, spending days working through how EVA would respond, what language would work best for their clients, and how to handle the nuanced cases that only frontline staff would know to ask about.
“We weren’t just a number in a queue. We really meant something to the TipCo organization and they made us feel that we were valued. They answered every question. They went above and beyond.”
Kira Pospesel
Commissioner, Greene County DSS
Smith describes the collaboration with TipCo as genuinely responsive: “There’d be days where I spent almost my entire day emailing back and forth with them, working out the kinks. But anytime I had a question, an issue, a concern, it was addressed within 24 hours.”
EVA R&R, used to automate the Rights & Responsibilities recitation during eligibility interviews, went live first. Then EVA Phone launched to handle incoming calls to the agency. The team also upgraded their phone system, which had been installed in 2004, adding another layer of complexity. Laura Becker noted: “The old phone system was our biggest obstacle. That was more challenging than EVA.”
TipCo configured EVA around Greene County's specific workflows, client population, and compliance requirements.
EVA Phone took over incoming call volume while EVA R&R automated the Rights & Responsibilities recitation during eligibility interviews—freeing examiners to get back to doing the work only they can do.
EVA Phone
Handles incoming resident call volume
EVA R&R
Automates rights & responsibilities recitation
24/7/365 Coverage
After-hours assistance and call routing
Timeliness scores nearly doubled.
Public assistance cases opened on time jumped from 52% to 84%. SNAP timeliness climbed from 55% to 85%, with late cases over 60 days dropping from 24% to 0%.
Mandatory overtime completely stopped.
Weekly overtime—a fixture for over two years—ended entirely once EVA absorbed incoming call volume and examiners returned to their caseloads full-time.
Greene County reached #1 in New York State for work participation.
By January 2026, the agency hit a 51.3% work participation rate for public assistance clients, the highest in the state.
"If I didn't make this decision, I can't imagine how many team members I would even have left at this point if I didn't do something different."
Kira Pospesel
Commissioner, Greene County DSS