Senior Helpers Cameron Park
A private-pay agency's transformation from on-call anxiety to confident 24/7 operations
Challenge
The Weight of Being Always On
In-home care is not a nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday business. It's 24/7—and yet the people who run agencies can't be on 24/7.
For Desiree Trunzo, owner of Senior Helpers Cameron Park, on-call was a constant source of anxiety. Even as her business grew and her team stepped up, she couldn't fully disconnect.
"I felt like I needed to be involved still, just to make sure things were going okay," Desiree explains. "Or my team would want to go take a workout class and they'd text the group like, hey, going to be away from my phone for an hour—can someone else watch it?"
The team tried an external solution—a tech company that promised after-hours support. But it required changing how they operated their entire business just to accommodate the vendor's processes. When issues arose, the burden fell right back on Desiree's team.
They also tried virtual assistants from overseas, but connectivity issues and the inability to make judgment calls meant problems still escalated to the core team at all hours.
"We had a lot of situations that didn't go well," Desiree recalls. "My team was very nervous about trying something new again."
"We tried a company that seemed like a really cool tech solution, but it was so driven around their processes that it was changing how we were operating our business just to help us with after-hours support."
Solution
Meeting the Agency Where They Were
When Desiree's team evaluated Zingage, they started cautiously—one night, one day, just to see how it would go.
"I said okay, let's just start with one day, one night, just from 5 PM until 9 AM the next day, and we'll see how it goes," Desiree explains.
The difference was immediate: Zingage adapted to Senior Helpers' existing processes instead of forcing changes.
"The team welcomed it with open arms because it wasn't 'okay guys, now we have to change all of this stuff just so we could get support.' Zingage was meeting us where we were at. And that was exactly what we needed."
Testing the System
Desiree wasn't content to just hope it worked. She tested it herself.
"To be honest with you, I did prank phone call our AI a couple of times. I wanted to know what it sounds like. I was trying to give it the most extreme situations we get—and I was really shocked at how well it handled them."
What surprised her most was the empathy: "It still felt like someone cared about me. Even when someone's calling out, which is frustrating, it handled the situation with maybe sometimes a little bit more empathy than they might get from some of the offices."
Beyond Just Answering Calls
The real value emerged in how Zingage handled complex situations proactively: "One of the things I really liked was when we do have a last-minute call-out, it's not just like you have an answering system that's sending you a message saying 'hey, there's a problem, you've got to fix it.' Zingage is working on it. They're going through, they're opening up the shift, they're looking for coverage—but not just coverage with a warm body. They're looking for people who've been on that shift before, who have the right experience for it."
The Overnight Shift That Added Itself
One morning, Desiree's team noticed an overnight shift had been added to the schedule that they hadn't requested.
"We were just poking around and we saw an overnight shift had been added for that night and we're like, did we miss something? So we looked at the notes."
What they found: Zingage had taken a call from a client who urgently needed overnight help. The AI had added the shift, been in communication with the client, and when the scheduler reached out concerned they couldn't cover it, the client said, "I've already talked to somebody on your team and they said they're working on it."
"Zingage actually reached out to Crystal and said, 'Hey, we got you. Don't worry about it.' They covered an overnight shift I didn't have on the schedule, gained me 12 hours on the schedule, moved the 11 AM shift up to 9 AM so there wasn't a gap in coverage, and communicated with all the necessary parties."
That's the difference between an answering service and an AI operator.
Results
Growth Without Growing Pains
Within six months of implementing Zingage, Senior Helpers Cameron Park saw revenue grow from approximately $96,000 to $130,000 per bi-weekly period—a 35% increase.
More significantly, in October, Desiree was able to reduce scheduling staff by one position (a 13% cost reduction) because the workload had shifted so dramatically.
"Our scheduler sat down and mapped out everything it takes to make us successful: what tasks matter most, what pulls us away, and what Zingage helps with. We crossed off every single one—call-outs, calls, missed clock-ins—and realized, okay, this actually takes away the stress."
Then came the bigger question:
"We asked, what if Zingage could be there 24/7? At first they said, 'that would be cool, but probably someday.' And I said, 'how about today at noon?' It was 11:30. They couldn't believe it."
Industry
Home Care (Private Pay)
Location
Cameron Park, California
Private Payer
Private Pay
Use Case
24/7 Operations
"Even after our director of operations exited suddenly, I wasn't panicking. I don't feel overly stressed out—our scheduler is so grateful for the help and support."
Desiree Trunzo
Owner
Key Learnings
Start small, scale fast
One night per week expanded to 24/7 coverage in weeks.
Test it yourself
Desiree's 'prank calls' built confidence in the system.
Let AI handle logistics, humans handle relationships
Coverage, clock-ins, and call-outs are automated; care decisions stay with the team.
© 2026 Zingage Inc.