Hours-long wait times. Endless looping music. Useless robot messages.
Millions of seniors and disabled people call Social Security’s 1-800 number every month. What they experience is often maddening. …
The Trump administration has said it is improving Social Security customer service and dramatically cutting wait times to build on a phone experience that callers have complained about even before Trump. But the agency’s public reporting doesn’t count the time people wait for callbacks from humans, and nearly three dozen callers who spoke with The Washington Post or let a reporter join their calls said their experiences have not matched the agency’s claims. …
In response to this story’s findings, SSA spokesman Barton Mackey said that “there have been significant advancements in customer service” over the past five months. “Cherry-picked instances may meet the goal of a preconceived, negative narrative, but they do not accurately reflect the experiences a vast majority of Americans have when interacting with SSA,” he said in a statement. …
Once callers get their estimated wait time, they might get offered a callback. The agency says 19.3 million calls were handled by callbacks this year, up from 6.8 million the previous year when the option was first introduced.## One Social Security worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the feature appeared helpful at first but has since deteriorated because of understaffing. Many of those she has called back don’t answer the phone because it has been hours or even weeks since their initial call, she said. ...
The article gives many concrete examples of the difficulties that callers face.
5 comments:
It's not rocket science. At some point, you just have to accept the fact that you need more employees to help handle these increased loads. The tech sector is pushing through some massive layoffs recently. The smart thing to do would be to start snapping up those folks, maybe offering remote work to offset a potentially lower salary. If the AI system improves later, as they promise it totally will, then you have a bunch of people with qualifications and operational knowledge ripe for internal promotions to OCIO or other areas that will need it.
Nothing new. This agency has had service problems for years.
This leadership will never give into the fact that we just need more bodies . Offices with 1-3 people are everywhere. Hundreds of offices nationwide with no managers - talk of fo restructuring to deplete the field further . Getting rid of ADMs and sups. How much further will we allow services to deplete . The answer is much further . For reps on here - how long before we are no longer in the rep business ..despite nosscr
SSA employees are not miracle workers. They are doing their best under the circumstances but now without pay. The agency could use some ballroom funding to hire more SSA employees and that could go a long way to solving the problem.
SSA need competent staff, not tech sector rejects who think they deserve $300,000 salaries because they learned how to code and aren’t as scared of computers as the old folks are.
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