CUSTOMER PROFILE
211 LA serves nearly 10 million Los Angeles County residents by connecting them with housing, safety, and support resources. When the fast-moving Palisades and Eaton fires swept through the region in January 2025, destroying homes and displacing residents, the organization faced a surge in urgent community needs. 211 LA had already modernized its operations with CXone Mpower, but with a crisis unfolding in real time, the nonprofit tapped into the platform’s full power to scale operations, streamline response, and deliver targeted support to those most in need.
01 THE BEFORE
Years of preparation paved the way
211 LA’s voice, text, and chat lines are open 24/7 to connect Los Angeles County residents with essential health, human, and other social services. The nonprofit has used the CXone Mpower platform, including solutions like NiCE CXone Mpower Interaction Analytics and NiCE CXone Mpower Workforce Management, to support both day-to-day operations and crisis response for more than a decade.
02 DESIRE TO CHANGE
Crisis response begins with readiness
Then, in January 2025, the Palisades and Eaton fires triggered a mass evacuation across Los Angeles County. Thousands of residents were suddenly in need of shelter and guidance, and 211 LA was activated by the LA County Office of Emergency Management to help connect people with available resources. At the same time, 211 LA teams still had to handle non- wildfire- related contacts, including day-to-day requests for support as well as two other ongoing activations: am augmented winter shelter hotline designed to connect unhoused individuals and families with emergency shelter and a temporary program to match vulnerable residents with resources, for example generators for medical needs, during a power safety shutoff.
03 THE SOLUTION
Digital resilience powered by CXone Mpower
Thanks to its existing CXone Mpower infrastructure, 211 LA didn’t need to scramble to build a system—it simply activated it. The organization began onboarding county personnel, segmenting them into skill-based teams, and configuring messaging campaigns to push out critical information to residents. 211 LA was able to train and onboard 200 to 300 new county staff over the course of a weekend, keeping services running without interruption.
“Having the flexibility to scale up from one second to the next really helped us navigate through this entire activation,” said Jeff Zavala, Director of Programs at 211 LA. “The biggest part of it was just how easy it is to get everyone set up in the system—to get them up and running. It allowed us to organize individuals by teams, and that is a really big part of what allowed us to be flexible and keep track of everyone that was helping us.”
“The tools themselves are very intuitive,” he added. “When you’re bringing on 200 or 300 people to help from one day to the next, it helps to have a tool people can catch on to and navigate quickly, so they can answer calls and start giving the impacted folks the information they need.”
Using CXone Mpower, the team routed calls based on agent skill sets and updated its IVR menu system in real time, ensuring that people were quickly connected with the agents providing support for their specific needs. CXone Mpower Interaction Analytics helped surface the most common themes from inbound calls, sentiment analysis helped the team understand not just what people were calling about, but how they were feeling—insight that informed messaging and resource prioritization.
Behind the scenes, 211 LA’s partnership with NiCE proved critical. The two teams worked closely throughout the emergency activation—launching new user accounts, adjusting routing logic, and coordinating system changes in real time.
“The NiCE team was the backbone of how we ramped up so quickly,” Jeff Zavala said. “A salesman can promise—‘I’ll be with you from start to finish’—but the folks at NiCE really embody this promise.”
04 THE RESULTS
Faster shelter placement, better- informed response
211 LA recorded 42,000 wildfire-related contacts over the course of the emergency response—nearly half its total volume—without dropping a single call. The organization was able to place over 17,000 individuals in emergency shelters.
The organization also became a central hub for both resources and communication throughout the activation. Many of its partners lacked the infrastructure to perform proactive outreach at scale, so 211 LA used CXone as the central communication hub. This allowed the organization to share timely information and guide residents toward shelter options across multiple programs using a unified workflow. By centralizing outreach and routing through CXone, 211 LA reduced inefficiencies, avoided service disruptions, and maximized the impact of its staffing and partner network.
“At the highest point we were sending about 6000 SMS messages about twice a week,” said Gilbert Zavala, Communications Director for 211 LA. “We weren’t waiting for people to reach out—we were contacting them first, getting information to them quickly.”.
05 THE FUTURE
Continued improvements for emergency response
Looking ahead, 211 LA plans to expand its use of the CXone Mpower platform, including AI-enabled tools that will allow it to scale even more quickly when the next crisis hits.
“211 LA was the lifeline for wildfire survivors—and NiCE was ours,” Gilbert Zavala said. “They provided an extra level of empathy and human touch that really stood out, and there was never a drop in service. It’s more than a solution; it’s a lifelong partnership.”
