An e-mail I received from Social Security:
As part of our ongoing commitment to improving how we serve the American public, we recently announced an enhanced call-routing process for people applying for survivor benefits. To better support Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients, we now route calls from people who need to change their address to specially trained representatives.
11 comments:
Still waiting for the terminal disability case hotline. Why do survivors get VIP service?
SSA isn’t capable of adding disability claims to that hotline without taking more claims specialist from their normal work and putting them on the phones.
There is a belief among some in SSA leadership that there are many surviving children eligible for survivor benefits and not receiving them.
of all the things an SSI recipient might call and need help with, address changes would not be at the very top of my list. It's good that they can change their addresses easily with SSA (hopefully the agency is making sure that if they get concurrent Title II benefits the address is also updated there!) but I wonder if this is more about finding a simple workload for new/detailed TSC staff to handle with minimal training than it is about identifying the most essential needs of SSI recipients.
Don’t have enough of a workforce but somehow you miraculously have the ability to find enough employee's to take care of a surviving spouse hotline. Miracles do happen.
Many SSI recipients are transient with addresses that change. I think the bigger issue is how many SSI recipients can successfully create an account and then use it when needed.
The change of address for SSI recipients was an automatic office interview that could not be completed over the phone since paperwork needed to signed in order to avoid overpayments. I guess we are in Wild West where everything is okayed as long as caseloads get completed.
Sure. I can talk to you instantly on the phone and get your claim started…but heaven help you if you need to turn in paperwork.
There are zero miracles going on here.
SSI COA calls to the 800# nearly always end up in the stand-alone event backlog for a Fo technician to one day resolve. Meanwhile over - and under payments can build up and if a state-to-state move is involved then Medicaid and Medicare buy-in problems can ensue. Sending these calls to someone who can handle them to completion at first contact makes a lot of sense. If you’re going to pull FO technicians to 800 duty, at least this way it’s logical and efficient.
That they are taking from Peter to pay Paul to hide it in customer service reports is historically how the agency tries to look good by hiding its dirty laundry. This is just Frank's take on that.
Did you notice, the announcement of the special phone # for SSI COA included this: "We’ve been able to respond to the vast majority of these calls quickly, typically under a minute." To me that indicates that NONE of the complicated stuff like ISM, Medicaid buy-in, etc. etc. is being handled on this initial call. It's likely just literally changing the address and leaving all the rest for later, even if it creates overpayments or other messes. I'm not an SSA staff so I don't know if this is the usual process or something different, but either way it seems problematic to me.
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