“When the verification process adds extra layers of review and it slows down the system that people normally experience to be quite quick and responsive, then people will call in to find out: ‘Why is this taking longer than what I’m used to?’” Lacy said.
The department increased staff to the disability insurance call centers, from 134 on average in November of 2021, to 228 in February 2022, according to the department.
Difficult to respond
Some call center surges are predictable; Black Friday, for example, is likely to be extra busy for retailers.
Call centers should also be able to handle unexpected surges, at least of a certain scale, “without going to pieces,” said Keith Dawson, vice president of Ventana Research, where he leads customer experience research.
But, when it comes to a more than twelve-fold surge in call volume, like the employment department experienced, “there’s no possible way that they can be prepared for something of that magnitude,” said Dawson.
One strategy centers can use when faced with an increase in volume is to give callers more information, either online or in an automated message, so that they can get their question answered without talking to a human, Dawson said. But, he said, that approach is less effective if people are calling with questions unique to their specific situation. Another option is to rapidly increase staff — which is difficult — or outsource some of the calls to a contractor, which is costly and requires training, said Dawson.
But the recent surge isn’t the first time callers have had difficulty getting through to a human. From May 2021 to October 2021, before the spike in calls, about 80% of unique phone numbers calling eventually got an answer, according to department data — meaning that about 20% of callers never did.
The difficulty of getting through to a person has always been an issue with both disability insurance and paid family leave, said Katherine Wutchiett, a staff attorney at Legal Aid at Work, a nonprofit that helps low-income workers and runs a hotline for questions about people’s rights to take leave or get accommodations. The organization has “always heard from folks who are having a hard time getting just that one-on-one, you know, ‘What is the answer to this question? I’m confused. I’m running out of money. What can I do?’” Wutchiett said.
Answering all the calls that come in is the goal of any call center, said Dawson. “If you’re not answering all your calls, you’re doing something wrong,” he said.
Fixing it?
As the Legislature and the governor tussle over how California spends its money next year, the employment department made some budget requests to boost its fraud prevention and investigation efforts and modernize its operation.
One request, for $23.6 million in the coming budget year, focuses on fraud and includes an advertising campaign to raise awareness about how to prevent identity theft. The department also wants 13 new staff positions to work on fraud prevention, including in the disability insurance and paid family leave programs, and funds to support local law enforcement’s prosecution of fraud. The Legislature rejected that request, but did include $136 million for the first year of a multi-year modernization project.
That project would, among other things, reconfigure the keypad teleprompter process, add multilingual functionality, redesign forms to make them easier to complete, and establish a new customer experience team to conduct user research and design and test new features.
The Legislature also approved $10.2 million for the coming year to improve cybersecurity, assist with fraud mitigation, and improve suspicious event monitoring, as well as $96.3 million for a bevy of contracts, including several aimed at fraud prevention.
Though the Legislature passed a budget Monday, the deal isn’t final; as negotiations continue with the Governor’s office, changes could be made via additional bills.
In the meantime, Californians who struggled to get their questions answered are left frustrated.
Manar Hassan, who lives in the coastal city of Pacific Grove, applied for disability benefits shortly after giving birth in late February. She could see on the department’s website that her doctor had certified her claim in early March, but when the payments still hadn’t begun arriving two weeks later, she began calling.
One of two things would happen: She’d get a message saying the maximum number of callers had been reached, instructing her to call back later. Or, she said, “it would just hang up.”
“I just felt like: What do I need to do to get a hold of somebody? I can’t just sit on the phone all day, I have to take care of a child,” she said.
A friend who was also a new mother mentioned that the department sends letters to employers to confirm the last day of work, Hassan said, and she had a hunch that was the holdup.
In mid-April, following advice she found on YouTube about how to get through to a human at the department, she connected first with someone who couldn’t help her, and then, seemingly with a stroke of luck, with someone who could send another letter to her company. Then the process moved relatively swiftly; her employer responded to the letter and the benefits began flowing in late April.
“I take pride in living in California,” said Hassan. “I always tell my friends about how progressive California is.
“But when you’re trying to actually get paid, and you basically have to beg for your money, it’s just — it’s hard.”
