FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 25, 2021

Missouri’s Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline selected national award finalist

JEFFERSON CITY, MO – Genesys Customer Innovation Awards announced Missouri’s Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline is a finalist in their national competition in the category of Customer Experience Empathy that “recognizes organizations that continually demonstrate empathy toward their customers, leveraging Genesys technology to make every interaction count.” Earlier this year, the Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline launched the new Genesys Cloud system to modernize and enhance its operations that had relied on old technology subject to sudden landline service disruptions that caused unexpected outages and had limited capacity to triage calls and streamline operations.

"The Children’s Division and the Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline team have worked extremely hard to keep children safe during COVID-19," said Jennifer Tidball, Acting Director, Department of Social Services. "At a time when maintaining the status quo was hard for most of the world, our team and the Office of Administration Information Technology Services Division team pushed themselves even harder to make this innovation happen to improve service to the citizens of the state. It is a testament to their dedication and willingness to go above and beyond to serve Missourians and I am very proud of this team and congratulate them as a national award finalist."

The Department of Social Services strongly encourages anyone who suspects child abuse or neglect to call the toll-free hotline at 1-800-392-3738. The Missouri Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline is answered 24-hours a day, every day, all year round. Callers can report anonymously.

The mission of the Department of Social Services is to empower Missourians to live safe, healthy, and productive lives.  Visit dss.mo.gov to learn more about the Department of Social Services and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

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