Meeting with DPW officials shows customer service campaign is working

DPW Secretary Beverly Mackereth at our October 30, 2013 meeting

On August 7, several Just Harvest staff met with Department of Public Welfare top officials to discuss progress the DPW had made on the list of demands that we presented to DPW Secretary Beverly Mackereth in October of 2013. This list was the outcome of a report, Barriers to Benefits: Communication and Customer Service Problems in Pennsylvania’s Department of Public Welfare.

DPW officials in attendance at the meeting were Deputy Secretary Lourdes Padilla and her Chief of Staff Kimberly Holt, Director of Operations Tom Strickler, and Secretary Beverly Mackereth. The meeting took place in Harrisburg in the Health and Welfare Building.

Since our last meeting with them in May of 2014, the progress is as follows:

Recommendation #1 – Improving the phone system and increasing voicemail capacity:

They have already begun this in Allegheny county with the creation of an Allegheny County-only Customer Service Center. The Customer Service Center is still very new and the answer rate is at about 50-55% with a goal of getting it to 95%. They are planning to hire a new cohort of caseworkers and need about 6-9 nine months to get them up to speed.

The DPW has gotten the Philadelphia Customer Service Center under control at about 95% so now the focus is on the Allegheny County Customer Service Center, which has the lowest answer rate in the state. The statewide Customer Service Center is at about 85-88% answer rate and the hope is that once Allegheny County is under control, the state will balance out as well.

There was money in the state budget for more caseworkers and the plan is to add staff to the statewide Customer Service Center as well. They will be posting for positions in approximately 1-2 months and this will give us a better idea of the number of staff that will be added.

DPW’s plan is to get the Customer Service Center working efficiently in responding to client calls. Ultimately, the Customer Service Center should be able to address whatever question or issue the client is calling about and the staff will be given the directive to not issue tickets but to address the problem. This will hopefully eliminate some of the need for clients to speak directly to their caseworker and free caseworkers up to focus on their cases.

Recommendation #2 – Computer-generated confirmation of receipt of client documents and alerts for missing documents:

Just Harvest got DPW officials to agree to set up a way to notify clients that documents have been received from them in the County Assistance Office via an online MYCOMPASS account, and we agreed to encourage clients to establish MYCOMPASS accounts. This would be an overall benefit to clients because in addition of getting this notification, they can also use the account to review their benefits and make changes to their cases.

Recommendation #3 – On-site client verification document scanning:

Harrisburg officials and DPW Executive staff agreed to start a pilot project of onsite document scanning in the Greater Pittsburgh East office in East Liberty and it is going great so far. There are already plans to expand the project to the Southeast CAO in September, and we will talk with Harrisburg officials about expanding it statewide at our next bi-annual meeting.

Recommendation #4 – Adoption of a customer service-friendly model:

The DPW agreed to work with Just Harvest in developing ongoing sensitivity training for their caseworkers, and we will provide them with a list of ideas for the training. In the meantime, they will revisit the Customer Service Survey process. They have agreed to create some sort of signage in the CAO’s to encourage clients to complete the surveys. They also agreed to have caseworkers encourage clients complete them after appointments/interviews with them.

Tom Strickler has been compiling the surveys and publishing the positive comments in a monthly newsletter that goes out to all staff statewide and the negative comments are addressed as well.

Recommendation #5 –  Making data transparent:

The DPW has developed new metrics for the Customer Service Center that will capture data on dropped calls, hold times and calls answered. They will share that information with Just Harvest.

Recommendation #6 –  Substantially increasing caseworker staffing:

There was significant money in the state budget for 700 new caseworkers statewide.

In addition, the DPW agreed to meet with Just Harvest bi-annually to discuss progress on these and other issues.