Since the beginning of the year with the Trump Administration stepping into office, service delivery at the Social Security Administration (SSA) has been under consistent scrutiny till today. These concerns were first raised in part due to the introduction of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the SSA, and partly because of the agency’s announced plans to reduce its workforce by 12% over the course of the 2025 fiscal year.
Through this 12% reduction, the SSA staff force would be brought down from 57,000 to approximately 50,000. This would mean the agency would now have the lowest staff count on record in at least fifty years, however, the total number of beneficiaries today is significantly larger than it was fifty years ago. As such, lawmakers and former officials have since been questioning the agency’s recent claims of improved service delivery.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has been particularly vocal regarding matters at the SSA and had also recently met with SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano to discuss a number of key issues at the agency. As a result and in response to Warren’s ongoing concerns, the SSA then spoke out on a post made on social media platform X. Here is what you need to know.
Social Security customer service concerns continue to grow
Beneficiaries of the Social Security program are amongst the most vulnerable of the citizens of America, many of whom rely primarily or solely on their monthly benefit income. As such, any sort of delay or interruption with regards to their benefit payments could have detrimental consequences and this does not solely apply to the actual check reaching their bank accounts, it also highlights a necessity for seamless service delivery when updating their personal details or having queries answered.
Recent updates from the SSA have consisted of claims of significantly improved metrics with regards to customer service. These improved metrics, however, do appear to be mainly the result of automated systems or shifting most services online. According to a recent press release, the SSA has: “lowered 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” and “drove down the average speed of answer on the National 800 Number from 24 minutes in July 2024 to an average of 8 minutes in July 2025.”
Sen. Warren wrote a letter to SSA Comissioner Frank Bisignano stating that, “The SSA is failing to provide policymakers and the public with accurate information about the extent of the problem, using convoluted calculations to obfuscate the real data, or withholding information entirely.”
Additionally, in a post on X, Warren wrote: “The Trump administration is LYING about how long people are stuck waiting for help with their Social Security benefits. I pressed the Social Security Commissioner and got him to agree to an independent investigation.”
In response, also on X, the SSA then wrote: “FACT CHECK: During Commissioner Bisignano’s meeting with Sen. Warren, he presented improved customer service metrics and welcomed an independent review of the data. The reality is SSA employees are serving more Americans at quicker speeds.”
Senator calls for independent audit
Following a private meeting between Sen. Warren and Commissioner Bisignano as per a July 23rd press release, Bisignano has agreed to an independent IG investigation of Social Security service data and metrics. According to the release, “recent reporting highlighted that under Bisignano’s watch, SSA has removed key service metrics, such as call wait times, from its website. An investigation from Senator Warren’s office revealed that the remaining metrics appear to be inaccurate and misleading.”
Former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley is also of the opinion that the customer service metrics shared by the agency are misleading. O’Malley recently asserted that the 8 minute wait time on the phone line has only been claimed due to the agency changing their definition of an “answered call”.
“‘Answer’ would appear to be anytime a person calls and hangs up after hearing a recording, or calls and gets run around the barn three times by a chatbot and has their call dumped,” he explained. “That’s what they call ‘answered.’ That’s what they call ‘served.’ None of it bears any reality to what people are experiencing.”