The Social Security Administration is pulling workers from its field offices to man the growing number of calls at its 1-800 number.
The agency serves 73 million Americans, and in the last five months, it has received more than 8.6 million calls a month on average, according to data obtained by The Washington Post. These callers had an average wait time of 93 minutes.
To help with the busy phone line, the agency has temporarily reassigned about 1,000 field office employees to work the customer service number, the Post reports.
Stephen McGraw, a spokesman for the agency, told the Post the switch-up affects four percent of field office workers and will shorten the amount of time a caller is on the phone with a Social Security representative.
“The agency expects that successful implementation of this initiative will accelerate the improvement in the 800 Number average speed of answer so far this year,” he said.
McGraw continued: “Beyond enhancing service on the 800 Number, this initiative supports the agency’s broader customer service strategy by enabling more flexible, real-time allocation of staff to meet the most pressing service demands.”
Aside from expanding the number of staff manning the phones, the agency has shifted from a flexible schedule, where employees could work staggered eight-hour shifts between 7:30 and 5:30 p.m. to a set 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. shift.
The influx of calls has come as thousands of workers have left the agency after President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency slashed jobs it felt were a waste of federal dollars.
Jessica LaPointe, president of a Social Security workers' union, said the switch-up will only be a band-aid on the customer service issue.
“The 1-800 number — they do offer a critical role at the agency, but it’s triage, whereas customer service representatives actually clear work for the agency,” LaPointe, from Council 220 of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the Post.
LaPointe said the temporary solution will create a “vicious cycle of work not getting cleared, people calling for status on work that’s sitting because the claims specialists now are going to have to pick up the slack of the customer service representatives that are redeployed to the tele-service centers.”
