Question reference: S6W-13404
- Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 21 December 2022 Registered interest
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Current status: Answered by Ben Macpherson on 19 January 2023
Question
To ask the Scottish Government (a) how many and (b) what proportion of calls to Social Security Scotland went unanswered in each quarter of 2022, including quarter four to date.
Answer
The number and proportion of telephone calls that are not connected to a Social Security Scotland client advisor are provided in the following table, as well as the average call waiting times for connected calls.
Quarter | Number of calls not connected to a client advisor | Calls not connected to a client advisor as a proportion of all received calls | Average call wait time for connected calls (minutes:seconds) |
1 January to 31 March 2022 | 18,490 | 23.6% | 07:44 |
1 April to 30 June 2022 | 33,462 | 29.5% | 11:34 |
1 July to 30 September 2022 | 45,549 | 30.0% | 13:10 |
1 October to 21 December 2022 | 66,839 | 29.4% | 11:14 |
Messaging is regularly updated or added to the Social Security Scotland automated telephony system (Interactive Voice Response) to provide Social Security Scotland clients with urgent information. This may include updates to payment dates, due to public holidays, or asking clients to wait for a certain period of time after submitting their application prior to contacting Social Security Scotland. These messages direct clients to mygov.scot where they can obtain more information. In these instances, a client may choose to end the call prior to being connected with a Social Security Scotland client advisor if their query has been met by the Interactive Voice Response message.
This information is based on internal management information and has not yet been quality assured to the same standard as published information on telephony services.