[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 139 (Friday, September 8, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1739-E1740]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                   THE SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

                                 ______


                        HON. ANDREW JACOBS, JR.

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 7, 1995
  Mr. JACOBS. Mr. Speaker, despite her splendid accomplishments as 
Social Security Commissioner which are set out in the following USA 
Today article, Shirley Chater's nomination to become the first head of 
the non-partisan independent Social Security Administration has been 
held up in the Senate Finance Committee, thus proving that there is 
more than one way to abuse a women.
                  [From the USA Today, Aug. 30, 1995]

                   Agency Puts Focus on Its Customers

                          (By Martha T. Moore)

       Washington.--For knowledgeable, helpful, polite telephone 
     service, a shopper can call that famous mail-order retailer 
     in Maine.
       Or, a taxpayer can call Social Security.
       After two years of corporate-style reengineering, the 
     Social Security Administration is emerging as the federal 
     agency that's providing the best service to its customers--
     that is, to taxpayers. It's a favorite of Vice President 
     Gore, the champion of reinventing government, and Michael 
     Hammer, co-author of Reengineeing the Corporation--the book 
     that spurred the reengineering movement.
       And in key measures of customers satisfaction, Social 
     Security has outscored companies famed for service, such as 
     Nordstrom and L.L. Bean. That's an ``incredible'' 
     achievement, Gore says. ``They're really transforming and 
     reengineering their agency.''
       Reengineering, a term borrowed from the corporate world, 
     means a start-from-scratch overhaul of the way an 
     organization does its work, with goals determined by 
     customers' desires and performance measured by comparisons 
     against the best in the industry. Since 1993, when the 
     Clinton administration kicked off its National Performance 
     Review for government agencies, Social Security has pressed 
     hard to improve customer service, through the agency's toll-
     free number (800-772-1213) for questions and information, and 
     in its field offices. The changes that have been made are 
     both obvious and subtle. For one thing, taxpayers are now 
     referred to as customers.
       As well they should be, says Stephanie Martin, a telephone 
     representative at the agency's Jamaica (N.Y.) Tele-service 
     Center. ``Social Security is a business of insurance,'' says 
     Martin, who handles 50 to 70 callers a day.
      ``They are paying to be insured.''
       The results so far: In a survey of telephone customer 
     service in May, Social Security outperformed private 
     companies famous for their customer service, including 
     catalog retailer L.L. Bean and Baldrige Quality Award winners 
     Federal Express and AT&T Universal Card.
       ``There are some government departments which are 
     effectively resisting this whole (performance review) thing 
     tooth and nail, which are bureaucratic nightmares beyond 
     anything one could imagine,'' Hammer says. ``A few agencies 
     are doing a good job. The Social Security Administration is 
     one of the leaders.''
       Social Security Commissioner Shirley Chater is hoping for a 
     fringe benefit from reengineering: If people believe Social 
     Security is run efficiently, they may worry less about 
     whether it will go broke before they retire. ``Good service 
     equals confidence in the program,'' she says.
       To come up with a revamped process, the agency began the 
     way corporations do: It created a reengineering team. 
     Together with consultants, the team members visited private 
     companies such as AT&T's Universal Card operation to see how 
     they operate. And they did what all market researchers do: 
     they talked to the people who use their services. ``The 
     cornerstone is to find out what your customers want,'' says 
     Toni Lenane, chief policy officer and head of the customer 
     service program. The agency surveyed 10,000 people, conducted 
     focus groups, and mailed 22,000 comment cards to people who 
     had visited Social Security offices.
       What the team learned: Customers don't expect the world, 
     but they want to be treated well and quickly. Based on the 
     results, the agency pledged to treat customers politely and 
     promptly. It instituted more courtesy training for employees. 
     It is reassigning as many as 700 staff members from 
     headquarters and support jobs to field offices to deal with 
     customers face-to-face.
       The biggest effort focuses on the 800 number, most 
     taxpayers' first contact with the agency. Social Security's 
     goal is for customers to reach a representative within five 
     minutes.
       It's a tough task. Because all Social Security checks 
     normally arrive on the third day of the month (unless that 
     falls on a Sunday), everyone who has a problem calls on the 
     same day to complain. That's why the agency hasn't met its 
     five-minute target yet. In the May telephone service survey, 
     Social Security scored first in every aspect of telephone 
     service except time spent on hold: Its callers held for about 
     eight minutes on average. Agency figures for week of August 
     7-11 show that 69% of callers got through within five 
     minutes. Lenane admits that on the worst days, callers may 
     never get through. So the reengineering isn't over. By 
     January, the agency predicts the success rate will reach 95%. 
     To hit that goal, it is adding staff to answer phones at peak 
     times. In January, when calls typically increase because of 
     December retirees and frequent questions about cost-of-living 
     adjustments and taxes, the agency will boost the number of 
     people answering phones from 4,600 last year, then a record, 
     to 7,900. Most help comes from other agency workers trained 
     to pitch in temporarily.
       Upgrading phone systems and adding automated information to 
     answer the most common questions. Already, a menu allows 
     callers to choose English or Spanish language help. That's a 
     boon for Betsy Reyes, a bilingual representative at the 
     Queens (N.Y.) phone center. Before, she was summoned each 
     time an agency worker received a call from a Spanish speaker. 
     Now those calls queue up automatically.
       Staggering delivery times of checks for people who retire 
     in coming years. The agency had hoped to stagger checks for 
     people already receiving Social Security as well. But current 
     recipients, whose finances revolve around a check arriving 
     the third of each month, were opposed.
       While the reinvention of customer
        service continues, the agency also is preparing to tackle 
     and even tougher challenge: fixing the process for 
     awarding disability benefits. Now, it's a nightmare that 
     can drag on for nearly two years--even though the actual 
     labor involved in a disability claim, by the agency's own 
     count, totals 45 hours. Even a simple claim for benefits 
     that doesn't get appealed takes 155 days--five months--to 
     be decided. The problem: a cumbersome administrative 
     process. Handling the disability program, though it 
     involves only 20% of Social Security recipients, takes up 
     more than half of the agency's $4.9 billion administrative 
     budget.
       The goal for reengineering that process calls for a 
     disability application to be handled by one person, down from 
     13 currently. A four-level process will be cut to two levels. 
     ``You can always continue to throw money at something, but we 
     really needed to fundamentally rethink the program,'' says 
     Charles Jones, director of the disability process redesign.
       The reengineering, which will take five years to complete, 
     hinges on a new computer 

[[Page E 1740]]
     system--which in turn hinges on a $1 billion appropriation from 
     Congress. But the biggest obstacle is ``people's natural 
     resistance to major change. It is scary to a lot of people,'' 
     Jones says.
       Reengineering scared Martin, the Queens telephone 
     representative, mostly because it sounded like ``more work to 
     do.'' But the customer service program, which gives phone 
     representatives more information so they can answer questions 
     quickly, ``makes the job creative and interesting,'' she 
     says. Even courtesy training is welcome. Social Security 
     phone reps get their share of angry, even suicidal callers. 
     ``It's stressful,'' Reyes says. And because of the range of 
     information they provide, ``we're like the doctor, lawyer, 
     social worker, accountant,'' says Martin.
       ``Psychiatrist,'' Reyes adds.
       In fact, as much as Social Security has modeled itself on 
     the corporate world, it remains different.
       ``We should look for new ideas'' from private industry, 
     says Richard Heyniger, of the Jamaica center. But he recalls 
     his first job with Social Security, 21 years ago, visiting 
     shelters in Manhattan. ``Guys would sneeze on me and drool on 
     me,'' as he tracked down homeless men to give them their 
     benefits, he says. ``I don't think there are lot of private 
     sector organizations that do that. They're concerned with 
     customers--but they're also concerned with profits.''
     

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