From a press release:
Social Security Administration (SSA) today announced significant progress in its ongoing efforts to improve customer service while handling record transaction volumes. Key milestones include:
- Completing over 3.1 million payments to all who were entitled under the Social Security Fairness Act (SSFA) five months ahead of schedule
- Continuing to upgrade SSA’s telephone technology nationwide, deploying the platform to 841 field offices, representing 70 percent of field offices nationwide
- Reducing the average speed of answer (ASA) on the 800 Number to 13 minutes, a 35 percent reduction compared to this time last year and over a 50 percent reduction compared to last year’s annual average
- Optimizing technology on the 800 Number so that 90 percent of calls handled are now served via automated self-service options or convenient callbacks, minimizing hold times
- Implementing a new service model in field offices that has reduced wait times about 10 percent for all customers year-over-year
- Decreasing the initial disability claims backlog by 25 percent, from a record high of 1.2 million cases pending last summer to 950,000 cases pending today
- Achieving a historic low of approximately 276,000 disability hearings pending, with customers experiencing wait times 60 days shorter than last summer
- Upgrading the my Social Security online portal to provide uninterrupted, 24/7 access to customers starting mid-July …
18 comments:
Did I not tell you Frank would change the game? Already in a few months he's got wait times down to 13 minutes and zero wait for online services. This is what happens when businessmen are allowed to make things happen. Even someone like Charles HAS to be impressed. Go Frank Go! Oh, and Frank is just getting started. Wait until you see what he has planned with AI.
Miracles do happen when you cook the books. Frankie, why are you hiding the actual numbers?
Lies, lies, lies.
Well, things are looking up! Stop bitching. Get back to the old problems like having to go into the office or the 1696 hasn’t been processed even though I faxed it in 17 times.
Yeah these are not the real statistics. This leadership is far from transparent. Frank is getting the Emperor’s New Clothes treatment from the people around him.
This had nothing to do with Bisignano, he is just taking credit for what was done on SecuritySTAT. The disruption of employees and widespread outages is a direct result of Bisignano’s decisions both prior to actually entering SSA and since his “official” arrival. Doge is still in the Chief Info Office and breaking things daily, whenever we say our systems are down, that is something they broke. Every day this has been happening for the last 3-4 months… but there aren’t people to fix it anymore, so SSA solution - contractors which cost 2x to 3x what an employee costs, and there are thousands of them (but I bet you didn’t know that!)
The appointment concept was already a thing, we have had appointments for at least 25 years (believe me, I know) the new appointment system just has better analytics not better service and it wasn’t implemented as widespread as it is now because we are at an agency low point on number of employees. Appointments are now the forced culture, but it just kicks the can.
SS5s (eg enumeration) for a replacement card takes less time to complete than it does to setup an appointment for a spot 2 months from then… and a lot of times the SSN is needed to get state id, and work and taxes. And we are delaying people for months on a critical need (which is also going to be likely to delaying their citizen status).
Answering the phone faster and for shorter periods doesn’t solve the problems people have, it ticks them off and forces them to flood into the dwindling field offices and makes more work for the field office.
Bisignano is counting on AI and Technology to solve problems that are significantly more difficult than what the current AI systems can handle… AI/Tech have their place, but if the customer doesn’t understand what they are asking they are going to receive wrong answers or potentially permanent wrong decision information. Imagine asking AI when is the best time to retire, how is that going to go? Does it know to consider early retirement vs delayed retirement and does it know the rules about work, does it doesn’t know to ask you more questions about your situation, it doesn’t know your future plans nor to ask about them. We are a long ways from AI working properly. Prompts are only as good as the user typing them in, and most people don’t know how to ask the complexity needed to give a proper response.
We need more competent people which takes years to train.
Thus far the AI solution has been TED, it has some helpful parts but it is not integrated and we have to use a dozen other systems to do the job, and it is really only a tool. We don’t have actual AI because of valid privacy laws and concerns. AI right now is a glorified search engine, not really anything more.
Yes. Things were so great before this year. SSA employees rating the agency the worst place to work in the federal government for the past 3 years was all due to the current COSS. Please send that magical timeline to your most gullible media contacts for your next anonymous comments criticizing your colleagues’ work.
Outright lies. Average speed of answer is how long it takes someone to get an answer to their issue, not just reaching an AI message. FO service delivery is horrendous. Tell the reduced waiting time b/s to all those claimants waiting hours to see someone. Systems are down every day and routine things no longer work. Offices are physically deteriorating from lack of maintenance and normal upkeep. This PR piece is just false claiming with the same as smoke and mirrors. Things are not improved and it only takes someone to open their eyes and see what is really happening. Frank is not the slight bit interested in fixing anything, only to get glory based on fudged PR data.
Metrics on their own that we should be proud of. Except most listed have come at a cost:
3.1 million SSFA achieved by pulling people from the WSU to take the claims (therefore unable to work the iClaims) and stopping other work in the PC. Widows not paid. Disabled further waiting for their claims to be processed. All so people who already have a pension can get more.
13-minute speed of answer is a disingenuous number. Averages 0-minute waits for people who elect call back. But does not account the hour(s) they wait for that callback. Plus you’ve pulled 1,000 employees from field offices to help answer the calls. Their departure means those backfilling reception and local phones are not able to work on other FO workloads.
Anytime this administration brags it did something the first question should be what was given up to achieve that gain.
SecuritySTAT and everything O’Malley did was a waste. At least Frank is honest.
Charles- the next time one of your employees calls an FO, ask them how many CSRs they have, and how many have been re-tasked to help the Teleservice Center full-time.
It may shock you.
ALJ decision SSI only case April 8, 2024. Award Letter May 14, 2024. Claimant is in current pay but initial retro installment not yet paid and attorney fee not yet paid. DO says be patient, they are working on cases from the end of 2023 now.
Yeah, they're doing great.
FO's can not do it all! FO's are not 1 stop shopping. They do not have enough training or staff to handle all things SSA. HQ, RO and PSC support is essential!
Do’s handle the brunt of the work
No we don't. We do face the claimants, but do not have the training, systems access or experience to do it all. SSA law is very complex and no one component can do it all.
Hit the nail on the head with the appointment focused service garbage. While, I am sure customers prefer an appointment, the fact remains setting up appointments for things that take 10 minutes or less to do is a giant waste of time. Half of these calls or visits that result in appointments are unnecessary, yet the powers that be that decided AFS was the answer are ignoring the waste it creates. How do we win spending five to ten minutes setting an appointment up for something that takes seven minutes to do? I wasn't a math major, but I can't solve that riddle. Yet, that's exactly what we are being asked to do. This phone service model that is pulling CSRs from FOs is leading to more and more of this kind of waste. We should be focused on first point of contact service if we wanted to pull out a win.
Best I can tell, some genius pulling the strings on this thinks that FOs only need one CSR, because only the offices with one or less were protected from having CSRs pulled for the TSC. And so long as you had one, the number they are willing to pull is up for grabs. Normally have four CSRs? We'll take three. Just three recently? Oh we'll take two. Meanwhile there are no answers to the loss left behind.
Speed of answer is how long it takes to get a rep on the phone. Never said speed was available in the field office can’t get that when we have had an average employee replacement of 8:1 for decades, it got better for a couple years, but a year long hiring freeze and forced retirement (aka voluntary retirement) has decimated service.
Lowest number of employees to service the highest number of beneficiaries in history. Numbers like that can’t be skewed… having 6-8 different call queues that the provider (Verizon) didn’t have managed properly was the problem. We fixed that and now can answer about 1/2 of the calls, because we still lack the people to answer. Now the Bisignano solution, steal service reps from the field offices to answer more calls! Brilliant
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