The latest Office of Inspector General (OIG) report shows that phone service through Social Security’s field offices and telephone services continues to be an issue the agency has not been able to improve, especially when some people have no other ways to obtain assistance other than by phone.
Last month Gail Ennis, the inspector general for Social Security released a report about phone service as after U.S. Rep. John Larson, the chair of the Subcommittee on Social Security for the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, requested it. Since March Social Security’s offices have been closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic leaving only phone services and online services as options for customers. The findings of the report, which was released May 15, 2020, were not encouraging.
The Findings
Between FYs 2010 and 2019, SSA’s national 800-number experienced a 6-percent increase in calls. In addition,
- calls to the national 800-number resulted in more busy messages and hang-ups without the caller receiving service,
- the number of calls employees answered decreased,
- callers waited longer for service,
- more callers had their issues resolved on the first call, and
- teleservice center staff levels declined by 12 percent.
While SSA did not fare as well compared to government and private sector benchmarks, caller satisfaction was above the Federal average. To improve callers’ experience and satisfaction, SSA plans to combine all its telephone service offerings into one platform to route calls to the best source quickly. In addition, SSA is implementing other improvements to its call center process and is hiring additional employees to answer telephone calls. However, effective March 31, 2020, in response to the recent coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak, SSA temporarily changed its telephone services, including modified hours for its national 800-number.
In response to our draft report, SSA stated its FY 2020 plan includes a priority goal to improve wait times for service on the national 800-number through targeted hiring, reassessing training methods, and improved technology. SSA also stated that, through the first quarter of FY 2020, it hired and initially trained approximately 460 new hires to support the national 800-number operations and will continue efforts to replace staffing losses and hire additional employees.
As a result of this report, Social Security plans to improve phone services, but we have heard this before. Below are ideas of how the agency might go about improving the phone service experience as issued in the report.
SSA plans to better track and evaluate callers’ experience and satisfaction through its Next Generation Telephone Project. SSA describes this is as an Agency-wide initiative that will combine the national 800-number, field office telephone system, and Headquarters telephone system “. . . into one cohesive platform that will allow calls to be routed to the best source quickly.”
According to SSA, this project will expand its management information collection to include the use of speech analytics for all recorded calls, desktop analytics, and post-call surveys for callers who use automated services. Speech analytics tools analyze the speech of everyone on a call. The analysis provides data SSA can use to determine needs for training or changes in the business process. Speech analytics will also help SSA identify the reasons for calls to improve forecasting and planning. Desktop analytics is a screen-capturing tool that tracks the screens in SSA’s systems that telephone service employees use while assisting callers. Finally, this project will expand the use of post-call surveys to include callers who use automated services. SSA anticipates this additional information will be available in FY 2021, pending a successful contract award. Since SSA has not implemented this project, we did not assess its effect on callers’ experience and satisfaction.
