Social Security Administration Responds to Sen. Warren’s Customer Service Concerns

The senator had accused the Trump administration of ‘lying’ about how long people waited to receive help at the SSA.

Frank Bisignano, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be Commissioner of Social Security Administration, testifies at his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, on March 25, 2025. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Social Security Administration (SSA) employees are serving “more Americans at quicker speeds,” the agency said in a Sept. 4 X post, responding to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) concerns about SSA’s customer service.

In a Sept. 3 X post, Warren cited a media report, which said that the SSA’s claims of agents answering calls on its toll-free number in eight minutes on average were misleading.

“The Trump administration is lying about how long people are stuck waiting for help with their Social Security benefits,” Warren said. “I pressed the Social Security Commissioner and got him to agree to an independent investigation. Instead of fudging the numbers, do your job and help people.”

Responding to Warren’s claims, SSA said in its X post, “Fact Check: During Commissioner [Frank] Bisignano’s meeting with Sen. Warren, he presented improved customer service metrics and welcomed an independent review of the data.”

The SSA shared an Aug. 4 letter sent by Bisignano to Warren addressing these concerns.

In the letter, Bisignano said the SSA has already begun to deliver better service in his first two months at the agency.

“Improved use of technology now enables 90 percent of calls handled on the National 800 Number to be served via automated self-service options or convenient callbacks, minimizing caller wait times,” the letter said. “Last year, callers experienced answer times nearly 30 minutes on average. Today, callers are experiencing answer times in the single digits. We also achieved a 0 percent busy rate in a recent week while handling nearly 800,000 calls.”

As for field offices, five times more people now visit these sites via scheduled appointments compared to last year, said the letter. Moreover, they wait an average of just six minutes to be seen by an agent, compared to a wait time of 28 minutes for those without appointments.

“The net result is we have reduced the average wait time in field offices from about 30 minutes last year to just over 20 minutes so far this year, or a nearly 30 percent reduction,” according to the letter.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 11, 2025. Craig Hudson/Reuters/File Photo

Bisignano outlined several other customer service improvements under his tenure.

For instance, the agency has ended the 29 hours per week of scheduled downtime of SSA’s online portal “my Social Security” to ensure Americans now have 24/7 access to the site, he wrote.

SSA sent 3.1 million payments, worth more than $17 billion, to beneficiaries under the Social Security Fairness Act five months before schedule. The agency also achieved a 26 percent reduction in initial disability claims backlog from its June 2024 all-time high, said the letter.

“Across all of our service indicators, the evidence is clear: better management is improving the customer experience on the phones, in the field offices, and online. Nothing in the data supports the irresponsible allegations of mismanagement and a customer service crisis at SSA,” Bisignano said.

The SSA commissioner said that under the Biden administration, the national 800 number’s average speed of answer hit an all-time high of 42 minutes in November 2023, disability claims backlog jumped to a record high of over 1.25 million in June 2024, and wait times at field offices jumped to 32 minutes in February 2024.

“Remarkably, in the depths of what was a clear customer service crisis, you did not write to the agency heads appointed by President [Joe] Biden during this period to either understand what was happening at the agency nor to demand better service for the American people,” Bisignano wrote to Warren.

SSA Metrics, Trump’s Response

The CNN article cited by Warren said there was wide variance in call wait times at SSA.

The media outlet said it had called the SSA’s 800 number several times over multiple days. While the stated hold time was three minutes just after customer service opened at 8 a.m., the actual wait times ranged from 40 to 90 minutes during other times, it said.

CNN also questioned the formula SSA used to calculate the average speed of answering calls.

President Donald Trump weighed in on the debate in a Sept. 4 Truth Social post, listing out customer service improvements at the SSA.

One of the achievements is that the agency reduced the average speed of answer on the 800 number from 27.6 minutes in the last fiscal year to 7.5 minutes on average in July, a 73 percent drop, according to the post.

According to the SSA website, its agents handled 3.5 million calls in August, with the average speed of answer clocked at nine minutes.

Meanwhile, the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is taking action to resolve the issue of validating SSA’s customer service improvements.

In an Aug. 21 letter sent to Warren that was made public by her office on Sept. 3, acting SSA Inspector General Michelle Anderson indicated the OIG has initiated an audit into the SSA’s call wait time metrics.

“SSA OIG expectation is we will be able to obtain the necessary information in an expedited manner to address the issues you raised in your letter and complete this audit before the end of the calendar year,” Anderson wrote.