From USA Today:
… Over the last several weeks, the agency has stopped making public 34 real-time performance metrics about things like how long they will have to wait to reach a live person on the phone, and how long applications for new senior benefits or social security benefits take to be approved. The metrics have been used for years to show how time-consuming it can be to reach a live person at certain locations or through the national 1-800 number, and as an accountability measure for the agency.
Instead the webpage now emphasizes how quickly problems can be resolved online, and says the "average speed of answer," which excludes callback wait time, is 19.2 minutes.
USA TODAY reporters called Social Security's 1-800 line multiple times over several days and found the wait times to be consistently over an hour. Multiple times they did not reach a live person before the line disconnected with no warning. …
Concerned that the information now available on the website didn't match what her staff was hearing from constituents, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's staff began conducting its own test of the 1-800 number, making hourly phone calls from June 12 through June 20.
In a letter Warren sent to Bisignano late on June 25, she called the results of her office survey "deeply troubling." Compared to the number available online, wait times averaged nearly an hour and 45 minutes and often exceeded three hours.
Data from the office survey showed that in 50 calls, more than 50% were never answered by a human. The majority ended when the caller was placed on hold and then the call dropped.
Of calls that were answered, 32% had wait times exceeding two hours. The average wait time was 102 minutes. …
Jen Burdick, supervising attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, said they haven't seen a reduction in call times.
"Social Security attorneys and paralegals from our office call SSA dozens of times every day. We are uniformly finding that we can't get placed into the queue, either because of system outages, phone disconnects, or AI chatbot issues. When we do get put into the queue, wait times seem to be up from last year ‒ sometimes more than an hour. …
I’m fully expecting no further Congressional hearings on Social Security in this Congress but Commissioner Bisignano could still be subpoenaed to testify about this issue before a Social Security Subcommittee controlled by Democrats in 2027 even if he’s no longer Commissioner.
19 comments:
Those reported metrics describe a phone system that is no longer accessible to people with mental disabilities that effect attention, concentration, or persistence, which is a lot of people who SSA serves.
Well, he did say in that one town hall that he'll have wait times to under three minutes very shortly, and it will be super easy to do so. So, unless that was a filthy lie, there must be some sort of comprehensive plan beyond laying off all the folks who answer the phones. I suppose time will tell.
They are now pulling 500 Field Office employees nationwide (starting today) to answer the 800 number. If it goes “well” (whatever that means), up to 3000 will be pulled from Field Offices to answer the 800 number. This is for an indefinite time, and the affected employees got maybe 1 day notice. So they are pulling fully trained employees away from assisting the American public with essential functions (and claims will be affected too) to answer basic calls.
Supposedly, when the union pushed back on this, Frank’s response was “if they push back, I’ll add 500 more employees on Monday”. What a winning strategy for SSA.
No
No- you cannot trust the numbers or anything that is claimed. Frank claimed that morale was way up since he took over, but provided no proof to back that up (because there is none). My guess is that our actual stats are worse now than they were in January (before forced RTO and losing thousands of people). They don’t want the public to see that we were actually working from home, or that we actually do need the thousands of people we lost, and we need thousands more.
The next solution to the problem is pulling 500 CSRs from the field and making them answer the 800#. That is 500 less employees available to help the public in the office or local phone which also means 500 less employees to take retirement or disability or survivor claims because they now have to backfill the lost field employees and work reception or phones.
Frankenstein carrying on the tradition of Social Security's leadership taking the "Do more with less" mantra to the extreme.
The numbers are not gonna be true not jsut because they want to make them better looking but also because the people who have pulled those metrics and ensured they are accurate for years are reasssigned or retired. I wish I could clearly explain the chaos at HQ right now, or how hard it is to get basic information, make basic changes to websites or systems, publish information publicly, get internal AC sign off on policy etc. There is no org chart, positions are not current on teams or staff directories, component websites are all “under construction” and not accurate, mailboxes change all the time and some aren’t even monitored anymore. Things are only getting done by thinking “who do I know who might still work at xxx and do they know who to email to get this task done.” It’s embarrassing and frustrating and I’m not proud to be here doing this work anymore.
The word "unless" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, my anonymous friend.
I have never trusted government numbers. Ever. Now i look at them as 100% false.
can anyone confirm the reality of the fo folks answering 800# calls?
It’s true. Started today. Lost 2 CSRs in my office.
100 true. Our level 1 office had two people selected. Who will train them? Answering 800# calls is different than for FOs. Will their PINS be restricted? If someone calls with an address change, can the CSR do it or do they have to send an MDW or HPmsg to the FO? That. Is just off the top of my head.
This is the DOGE effect and Dudek.
100%
Round two was announced today. Another 500 CSRs were added from the FOs starting Monday, so that's 1000 field employees no longer working in the FO basically overnight. No planning time was provided, not that it really matters, because most of the affected offices have no good solutions anyway. The offices just go from short staffed to strapped or strapped to devastated depending on where the office started.
And he did just that… took 500 more
Basic functions, epaths to FOs, MDWs,… they selected more for the initiative today. Monday will be a blast.
Exactly
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