From The Social Security Administration’s Telephone Service Disruptions, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):
SSA's telephone systems experienced an increasing number of service disruptions at the end of 2022 as it maintained operations under the temporary Unification platform. From May 2021 through December 2022, 40 telephone service disruptions occurred on the national 800-number and field office systems. The majority of these disruptions occurred from October through December 2022 and involved the 800-number. These disruptions resulted in dropped calls, increased wait times and, in some instances, unavailable automated services. Wait times increased as SSA employees could not take calls during several of the outages. Further, such functionalities as the “estimated wait time” and the “call back assist” features, which callers used to avoid waiting on the telephone to speak with an SSA employee, were no longer available to callers. The rate of unanswered calls for those who opted to speak with an employee during each of the service disruptions ranged from 32 to as high as 80 percent. ...
I'll pull out some eye-catching charts from this report in coming days.