Next Avenue has decided to give Andrew Saul, who may be Social Security's Commissioner, its 2020 Influencers in Aging Award. (I'm not joking. There is a legitimate controversy about Saul's position.) According to Wikipedia,"Next Avenue is a digital platform launched by PBS that offers original and aggregated journalism aimed at baby boomers."
Here's some excerpts from an interview that Saul gave to Next Avenue:
... "To be honest, a year ago, I never thought we would be this far along now," Saul told me. "It did take us time to get up and running, but now we're going to reap the rewards of a year's planning." ...
... How has customer service improved since you've been on the job would you say?
Well, first we have to talk about, unfortunately, COVID-19, because there's no question you cannot.
When I took over here, we had a tremendous amount of plans to digitalize and modernize the way we deliver services. But obviously when March hit and we were faced with this situation, we had to keep the lights on. We had to protect our employees and our beneficiaries, and therefore we had to revert to operating from home.
And we were forced to close our offices, both our field offices and our disability hearing offices, and become a virtual operation. We had no choice.
So, the service that we were delivering was interrupted, but considering what happened, this team did an amazing job. And I think if you talk to people that use our services on an active basis, they'll say we really made a transformation here which was basically seamless.
Look, I'm not saying everything was perfect. It still isn't perfect. The last six months have really pressed the team to the limits. But having said that, I think we've done a great job in keeping the lights on and keeping the old boiler running.
Now what this [COVID-19] has taught us and what we've been doing is changing the way we do business. And I think it's going to be changed forever. ...
And the field offices?
When we hopefully go back and roll out our field office operations again, we're going to be using many more personal appointments rather than having people just come into the office. I believe the offices are going to be much better organized, with express service for certain things that people come in for on a much more regular basis.
What about the Social Security Administration's website?
We're going to have a new website, completely redesigned, which is something that is important because it's our most important face to our customer.
How far along did you get before you had to pivot in March with the pandemic?
We had most of this underway. And you know, the amazing thing about systems work is you can do it offsite.
I'm not going to tell you this [COVID-19] didn't slow us down, because we had to be able to go from an in-office to a virtual operation. Did it slow us down? Yes, it did slow us down, but now we're running well.
Before the offices were shut down for the pandemic, a lot of people would come into the offices to ask questions and sign up for retirement benefits. How much has closing the field offices slowed down the number of applications that have come in?
You know, it is somewhat slower. What's happened is we have many more eight-hundred number calls. We also have many more calls to the individual offices.
The other thing is: We are getting tremendous amount of hits on our website. I think it's up fifty, sixty percent. We've been getting almost a million hits a day. Wow.
And we are doing about fifty-three percent of our transactions online through those that have the my Social Security account. ...
What else would you like to do to improve customer service?
We're going to have to see what happens when we start reopening the offices to the public.
I don't know how much you knew about the offices before, but it was terrible. I used to go visit these offices and some of the busy ones were really a disaster, in my opinion — just people sitting around waiting. I don't want that anymore. We can't have that.
It doesn't mean that we're not going to have field offices. It doesn't mean that we're not going to have an eight-hundred [toll-free] number. But we are going as quickly as we can so that our major form of communication to our customer is digital and video. ...
6 comments:
Thanks for the Friday Funny. Maybe someone should tell him how long it takes to get SSA SNAILMAIL to us; that it should become electronic. (Frankly, some of the nicest people I've ever worked with are at the offices he just dissed.) Have a good, safe holiday, all.
I believe in Santa Claus....
Better Call Saul. Kind has that MAGA thing down about supreme delusion.
75% of my hearings this week were delayed or scuttled due to phone issues and evidently the video hearing program pilot has been, to quote Saul quoting Trump, a "disaster".
Don't know where the Commish is getting his info, but it's certainly not from his public facing employees.
Not a word about the historically low employee morale, either.
The website was always the best thing that SS did. If you know how to google properly you can get answers, including accessing POMS, in a very efficient way.
But actually doing anything online remains a challenge. Having the ability to file a claim online but still requiring paper to be shuffled back and forth to be signed is not efficient, especially when few people are in the office to sort through the paper. Still can't file for SSI online.
Now we can access files, at least part of them, at the State Agency, but we still can't check on the status of the cases globally which we can at the hearing level and at the AC. Moreover, we can only access the file at all when we are noted as the rep and this new system has revealed just how often the DO fails to properly list the rep. It is partly because the system to annotate the file requires multiple entries. I was on a call with some higher ups and they said they were aware of the problem and would be able to fix it sometime in the next one to two years.
And, don't even ask about the fiasco involving transcripts for Federal Court. The Government has 60 days to file a certified transcript after service. They are now thousands of cases and months behind because it never occurred to anyone that since the file was electronic, no one actually had to be in Falls Church to handle the paperwork. What a clown show?
What is most scary about their sudden conversion to doing things online is the feeling that even when we can meet in the real world, they will prefer to conduct hearings remotely because it is so much more efficient. Fair hearing, not so much, but efficient.
Maybe based on Selia Law, Biden will get rid of Saul, not that his predecessor (Colvin) under Obama were so much better, but maybe at least someone who is interested in doing the job.
I am sure he and his "team" have many, many, very, very good ideas to improve public service. I mean, it is good now, but a new plan, coming next week, is going to be so good - better than any plan you have ever seen. I am still trying to understand what he is saying here. This administration is so good at making grand statements with no facts or data to support it. I am surprised these people printed this interview. Yes, we figured that closing FOs would result in more calls to the 800#, but how did you improve public service while in this unfortunate situation? Did the busy rate go down? How did the answer rate and forward on busy improve? Did overall productivity improve? Where is the data that supports these assertions?
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