NCSSMA Newsletter

     The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA) has finally posted its June 2014 newsletter online. I'll bet it was distributed to members months ago. NCSSMA is a major organization of Social Security management personnel. This issue of the newsletter contains a long interview with Kenneth Rivers, Social Security's Associate Commissioner for the Office of Telephone Services. Here's one small excerpt:

As NSBR [Network Skills Based Routing] rolls out across the nation, how will it enhance telephone service delivery for the FO [Field Office]

NSBR provides the ability to route incoming FO General Inquiry (GI) calls to other FOs within an SSA Region, before reaching the 15-min max wait time. We are nearly at 70% project completion for this effort, having installed this tool in nearly 800 FOs nationwide. NSBR has afforded us the opportunity to improve telephone service delivery by increasing call answering pools of available FO agents in neighboring offices throughout the country to assist and answer calls from the local public. To date, neighboring offices have answered over 120,000 callers, who might have otherwise walked into our FOs to receive the same exact service that they were able to receive over the phoned. Additionally, we minimize performance deterioration on our N8NN [National 800 Number Network] platform by deploying NSBR, so that FOs can assist each other. 

     Note the concern with the maximum 15 minute wait time on calls to Social Security Field Office. Apparently, that's the point at which the telephone system automatically disconnects you even if no one has talked with you. They're trying to route calls to other FOs before the callers are automatically disconnected.