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.
10 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.
The problem is that the gov has to work with people of every tech, age and ability status and modern tech ethos is really OK with "cherry picking" their customers and are OK with leaving whole swaths of people outside their thing. It costs money to service these outliers and to them, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. But government serves everyone (until it decides it doesn't, likely happening soon.)
Many SSA employees are doing side jobs since this work actually pays.
Mission accomplished?
If federal employees are feeling traumatized right now, Russell Vought, the new head of the office of management and budget (OMB), probably has something to do with it.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a video revealed by ProPublica and the research group Documented in October. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.
Well done Vought ! Indeed, mission accomplished. We are mentally at the lowest we have ever been.
A lot of the calls mentioned in this article--or calls like them--are not necessary. The person with the lawyer shouldn't need to be on the phone with the national 800#--if it's SSI, do the PERC in person and if it's Title II, the rep can call the PC RCC, escalate to a Regional Communications Director of Congressional staff, file a writ of mandamus....I was also curious what happened with the person who was calling for the W2...did it not come in the mail? I feel terrible for the dying woman, but there's nothing to report at this point. When she passes the death will be reported...and if somehow it isn't, the overpayment will be dealt with. Calling in advance won't change anything. Of course I don't expect her to know this, and I wish someone would have picked up the phone and given her accurate and compassionate service. But it's a reminder that the programs are complicated (probably too complicated, and that's largely Congress' fault) and SSA could do a better job communicating about them. To that point, why is a 72 year old applying for benefits? She probably didn't just get insured, so they're either survivor benefits (the application for which really does need to be put online, or at least a way of schedling appointments online) or she missed ~2 years of retirement benefits.
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