Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) operates its own hotline for the public to use in reporting waste or fraud. Think about that. Why does OIG have its own separate hotline? Why not use Social Security's regular 800 number? The teleservice center employees are certainly capable of taking down basic information and forwarding it to OIG. I think we know the reason. The crappy service on the general 800 number would be unacceptable for OIG.
At the moment, OIG is advertising the availability of a contract for handling its hotline. Here's one of the criteria that OIG expects a contractor to meet: "At a minimum, the contractor’s systems must handle all incoming calls, and the contractor must achieve at least an average 95% answer rate for all calls offered and a maximum average wait time of one (1) minute after call offer." The OIG contractor has to be able to "handle all incoming calls"? The agency's general 800 number certainly can't do that. A 95% answer rate? Not imaginable for the general 800 number. A maximum average wait time of one minute? Are you kidding me? It's more like 15-20 minutes for the general 800 number.
Why are we funding excellent call center services for OIG but those needing to file a claim or to talk with someone about their pending case get horrific service? I'm all in favor of getting fraud reports from the public but I'm also in favor of the public getting decent service from the Social Security Administration.
6 comments:
There are literal orders of magnitude cost differences between operating the National 800 Number and operating SSA-OIG's antifraud hotline. If SSA added 100% of the cost of operating the OIG hotline to the general 800 number, even if that were legally permissible (which it is not), that diversion would not have any meaningful impact on wait times. These are call centers of completely different scales of operation and cost.
Further, SSA's OIG is a law enforcement agency. It is entirely reasonable that someone would wait on hold for the tax department but not for the police. Would most people wait 20 minutes on hold to report a crime?
First, everything that 10:33 said is on point. Second, TSC reps have the capability to generate OIG referrals, but policy states that they should provide the OIG number as a starting point. In our FO, we send the internal referral, and do not bother to provide the OIG number unless asked.
Since you're pulling these contracts why don't you compare the total evaluated price for the awardee of this upcoming OIG call center contract (which seems to be comprehensive) with any one of the surely multiple contracts SSA has awarded related to its call centers.
I wouldn't be surprised if SSA spends more on just headsets for the main 800 line answerers than it does for the soup to nuts OIG hotline contract.
It's easy to quickly answer a couple dozen calls a day, it's a whole other thing entirely to man the main SSA phone line. Come on, Charles.
Rolls has been owned by BMW since 2003, and really isnt the same.
I think it’s important to have perspective here. The OIG line does not handle anywhere near the volume of calls the 800# system does. The majority of OIG referrals are from internal SSA referral system or public website. I bet the SSA 800 number handles more calls in a week than OIG does all year. Just be fair in making this assessment because it’s like comparing apples to oranges.
The above points are correct, but it’s also fair for Charles to underscore how lopsided expectations are for this channel compared to the 800 number, which in most minds the far more important channel. There is no enlivened sense of urgency or innovative vision to improving 800 number service at SSA. No ‘all hands on deck’ substantive exploration of creative technologies or even substantive analysis of the inbound calls.
To get it in a better space, SSA could publicly name and empower a single accountable executive over the 800 number, whose *sole* focus is the 800 number.
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