Bringing Michigan EBT Support Home

The Challenge

Michigan Bridge Card support is not routine customer service. Cardholders rely on it for lost or stolen cards, PIN changes, balance inquiries, and nearby usage locations. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services says that support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including Spanish and Arabic service.

The scale is significant. MDHHS reports Michigan averaged 756,078 food assistance cases and approximately 1,412,876 recipients per month in fiscal year 2025, with average monthly food assistance payments of about $255.4 million. The people calling this line are often in difficult circumstances and need clear, patient, accurate help from agents who understand the program.

That support was being delivered from India.

The state needed it done stateside. Cardholder support for a public benefit program serving roughly 1.4 million Michiganders a month isn’t a cost center to optimize with the cheapest labor — it’s a public trust.

Why Oscoda

Oscoda is a small community in Iosco County on the shores of Lake Huron in Northern Michigan. In 1993, the federal government closed Wurtsmith Air Force Base, which had been the economic backbone of the area for decades. Oscoda Township says the closure meant the loss of 3,200 military personnel, 700 civilian jobs, and more than $85 million in direct economic impact. The region was left searching for its next chapter.

Rural Michigan represents the kind of community too often left behind by economic change. Michigan’s Office of Rural Development says rural Michigan makes up more than 95% of the state’s geography but only 20% of its population, and many rural communities face lower wages, fewer resources, and acute workforce needs. The Federal Reserve has similarly found that globalization and the shift to a knowledge-based economy have disproportionately harmed many rural communities.

Crusecom chose not to accept the assumption that large-scale customer support had to remain offshore or be concentrated in a major metro. The company saw what the base closure left behind: a community with operational discipline in its DNA — military families, logistics experience, a deep reliability culture — and a labor market ready for stable, full-time work. What Oscoda needed was an employer willing to invest.

The Transition

Crusecom built a rural Michigan operating model from scratch around local hiring, structured training, technology-enabled call handling, and customer-oriented support:

• Hired locally in Oscoda and surrounding communities in Iosco County
• Built a training curriculum specific to Michigan’s EBT program — cardholder inquiries, compliance requirements, sensitive-situation handling
• Implemented QA scoring, call monitoring, and compliance processes aligned with state requirements
• Stood up 24/7/365 coverage including Spanish and Arabic language support
• Transitioned live call volume from the offshore provider with no service disruption

This wasn’t a lift-and-shift. It was a ground-up build — recruiting, training, systems, processes, and quality assurance — delivered in a community that had never hosted a contact center operation at this scale.

The result was a different kind of onshoring story: not simply “bring the work back to the U.S.,” but “bring the work back to a rural American community that needs it.”

The Impact

The operation turned a public-support contract into a local economic engine. Crusecom’s rural Michigan jobs initiative has grown to employ 200+ residents in Iosco and surrounding counties and continues to grow.

For Oscoda, it proved that the region could attract and support modern service-economy employers — not just tourism and seasonal work. For the state of Michigan, it demonstrated that public-program support could be delivered from rural communities within the state’s own borders, with better service quality, closer accountability, and direct local economic benefit.

Governor Granholm’s office issued a press release announcing the new jobs in Oscoda, citing the economic significance for Iosco County and the broader region.

The story also aligns with a current national trend. In March 2026, the FCC noted that nearly 70% of U.S. companies outsource at least one department and opened a proceeding aimed in part at encouraging more call center work to move back onshore, citing customer-service quality and security concerns. What Crusecom did in Oscoda two decades ago is now part of a larger national conversation about where critical support work should be done — and by whom.

What This Proves

Today, the real message is not just that Crusecom operates in rural Michigan. It is that Crusecom showed a rural Michigan workforce could support a mission-critical program serving roughly 1.4 million Michiganders a month — and do it close to the community, close to the state, and close to the people who depend on that support.

For a BPO buyer or prime contractor evaluating Crusecom today:

• We’ve done the hardest version of this. Stood up a compliant, trained contact center operation from zero in a rural community, replacing an offshore provider, for a state government program, under public scrutiny.
• Rural delivery works. The Oscoda operation proved that you don’t need a major metro market to run disciplined customer operations — you need the right training, QA, and management practices.
• Government-grade accountability. Public-benefit programs have zero margin for error in compliance and service quality. Crusecom built its operational discipline inside that environment.
• Still here, still growing. Crusecom is still headquartered in Oscoda, still operating from the same community, with 200+ employees in the region 20+ years later. This isn’t a story about a project — it’s the foundation of the company’s operating culture.