Operation Right Answer: Housing Services Modernization

Overview

Operation Right Answer is the customer service modernization program I led for the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs’ Division of Housing and Community Resources, the Department’s largest division, with roughly $1.2 billion in annual grant-making. The Division ran resident phone service on a general-purpose Microsoft Teams phone system carved into thirteen separate call queues, one per program area. The project replaces that arrangement with a purpose-built cloud contact center and a service scorecard that measures what residents actually experience.

The work was done in partnership with the New Jersey Innovation Authority, the State entity responsible for how government delivers services to residents, as part of a wider statewide contact center modernization effort.

The problem

The thirteen queues mirrored the Division’s internal program structure rather than the reasons residents call. Smaller queues could sit unstaffed while larger ones had more staff than the volume required, callers who guessed wrong landed in the wrong place, and voicemail became the default outcome.

Reporting made it hard to manage. The legacy platform reported on a twenty-eight day window, so by the time a staffing problem was visible in the data, the month it affected was already over. Across the busiest legacy queues, 41 to 45 percent of calls arrived outside business hours, when no arrangement of staff would have answered them.

What changed

• One menu, organized around why people call, in place of thirteen program silos
• Self-service by text message, so the questions that do not need a person can be answered at any hour, including the nights and weekends when most of the missed demand arrived
• Routing tagged by call reason, which lets demand be measured by program rather than by queue
• A live agent always available to callers who get stuck, so the menu never becomes a dead end

The after-hours share is the number that shaped the design. When 41 to 45 percent of calls arrive with nobody on shift, no staffing plan closes that gap, because the gap is not about how many people are working. It is about when residents are free to call. Text-message self-service is the part that answers those calls: a resident who needs a straightforward answer at nine at night gets one, rather than a voicemail prompt and a wait until the next business day. It also takes routine questions off the queue during business hours, which leaves staff for the calls that genuinely need a person.

Measuring service

The scorecard is the part I expect to outlast the phone system. It defines a small set of measures in plain language: how quickly residents reach someone, whether the question was resolved on first contact, how much demand arrives after hours, and what callers say about the experience. Each measure has an owner, a written definition, and a reporting cadence, and the underlying data flows from the contact center into the Division’s data warehouse so the numbers are produced the same way every month rather than assembled by hand for each request.

That distinction mattered more than any single feature. A platform can be replaced. A shared definition of good service, with owners attached, is what lets the next manager keep improving it.

Where it stands

The framework and the platform are complete, and rollout is being managed inside the Division. Operational detail stays off this page.

The capstone

I wrote Operation Right Answer as my capstone for the New Jersey Certified Public Manager program, administered by the NJ Civil Service Commission and delivered by the Rutgers University School of Public Affairs and Administration. The credential was awarded in August 2026, with the cohort’s graduation ceremony to follow in September. The paper covers the agency background, the baseline analysis of the legacy system, a literature review of public-sector contact center modernization, the implementation plan, and the scorecard framework. It was prepared in partial fulfillment of the program’s requirements and is not published here.

Operation Right Answer was prepared for the New Jersey Certified Public Manager program. It does not represent an official position of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs or the New Jersey Innovation Authority.

Frequently asked questions

What is Operation Right Answer?

Operation Right Answer is the customer service modernization program for the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs' Division of Housing and Community Resources. It replaces a general-purpose Microsoft Teams phone system, which had thirteen separate program-by-program call queues, with a purpose-built cloud contact center, self-service by text message, and a service scorecard that measures the resident experience. It is also the capstone project Gavin Rozzi completed for the New Jersey Certified Public Manager program, whose credential was awarded to him in August 2026.

What is a service scorecard?

A service scorecard is a small set of service measures written in plain language, each with an owner, a definition, and a reporting cadence. Instead of counting calls, it tracks how quickly residents reach someone, whether their question is resolved on first contact, how much demand arrives after hours, and how satisfied callers say they are. The scorecard is the reusable part of this project: it outlives any particular phone platform.

What is the New Jersey Certified Public Manager program?

The Certified Public Manager (CPM) credential is a nationally recognized public management certification. New Jersey's program is administered by the NJ Civil Service Commission and delivered by the Rutgers University School of Public Affairs and Administration. Participants complete coursework across a full program year and a capstone project applied to a real problem in their own agency.

Is the full capstone paper available to read?

No. The written capstone was prepared in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the New Jersey Certified Public Manager program and is not published on this site. This page summarizes the project, the framework, and the results that can be shared publicly.