How text messaging helped a public-health program deepen connections with families

Adapted from commissioned editorial work for a global technology company’s social-impact platform. Client name withheld.

When fewer and fewer families began coming in for the food aid that would help them make it through the month, the leaders at one of the country’s largest Women, Infants, and Children programs wanted to know why.

But calling their clients to find out, they learned, didn’t help much.

“Our clients really don’t respond to phone calls,” says Kiran Saluja, executive director of Public Health Foundation Enterprises WIC, which serves more than 300,000 low-income women, children, and infants in Southern California each month. “We would have staff call them to remind them, to problem-solve with them, but we find that a lot of our calls go unanswered.”

When the organization moved beyond a system that relied primarily on a phone auto-dialer and began using group phone and text communication, things changed dramatically.

“To make approximately 3,000 calls [previously] would take up to eight hours, if not longer,” says Joseph Tessier, the organization’s network administrator.

With the new system, the organization could make the same number of calls in a fraction of the time. And when staff began sending text messages to check on clients or remind them of appointments, they got more than people’s attention. They got responses.

“The text messages go out and within minutes these questions start coming in that are real live questions,” says Saluja. “‘I couldn’t come in because of this.’ ‘Can I still come in?’ ‘I’m working nine to five, I don’t know how to make it happen.’ I don’t believe those people would have answered a phone at their workplace. But they can always look at a text.”

Staff found that once the initial door to connection had been opened, that connection could deepen quickly.

“On the text platform they can ask you some pretty private questions because it’s almost like there’s a barrier between you and the person. So on the phone they may not say to you, ‘You know my father just died’ or ‘I just lost my baby,’ but they can put that in a text message.”

Staff members quickly answer questions via text, which can turn into an ongoing conversation, a phone call, or an in-person visit. So many clients began responding that the organization had to stagger its messages to make sure staff could connect with everyone who wrote back.

The organization was already looking ahead to additional ways of using the platform to further its mission.

“If you talk to us in six months, we will probably have ten other ways we are using this platform,” says Saluja.

Some of the staff’s most gratifying moments have come when the organization sends out a text and someone writes back.

“They write, ‘Oh, I didn’t know there was someone on the other end writing back to me!’” recounts Saluja. “It’s so fabulous to be able to create that, because they just think it’s a machine sending them something. And that’s where we want to build a relationship with the WIC participants, and that’s what we’ve been able to do. The sky’s the limit really.”