Bringing Michigan EBT Support Home

The Challenge

Michigan Bridge Card support is not routine customer service. The Bridge Card is the state’s EBT card — it delivers SNAP food assistance and other benefits to Michigan residents. 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.

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, Mexico, and Florida.

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.

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 found that rural communities absorbed a disproportionate share of the economic damage from globalization and the shift to knowledge-sector jobs.

Crusecom didn’t assume large-scale customer support had to stay 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 the operation from scratch:

• 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 work didn’t just move from offshore to domestic — it moved to a community that needed it.

The Impact

At its peak, the Oscoda operation employed over 300 residents in Iosco and surrounding counties. 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.

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 within the state’s own borders, with better service quality, closer accountability, and economic returns that stayed in Michigan.

In March 2026, the FCC noted that nearly 70% of US 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. The question of where critical support work should be done — and by whom — is now a federal regulatory matter. Crusecom was already there two decades ago.

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What This Proves

The Oscoda operation proved that a rural Michigan workforce could run a compliance-sensitive government program serving 1.4 million people a month. For a BPO buyer or prime contractor evaluating Crusecom today, that track record means something specific.

Crusecom 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. That’s the hardest version of this kind of work.

Public-benefit programs have zero tolerance for errors in compliance and service quality. Crusecom built its operational discipline inside that environment — not in a pilot project or a low-stakes commercial account, but in a 24/7 government program where a mistake means someone can’t access food assistance.

Running disciplined customer operations doesn’t require a major metro. It requires the right training, QA, and management. Oscoda proved that.

Crusecom is still headquartered in Oscoda, still operating from the same community, more than 20 years later. This is not a story about a project. It is the foundation of the company’s operating culture.