Immigration agency seeks to upgrade toll-free service

In an effort to cut waiting times on a contractor-operated, toll-free customer service line, Citizenship and Immigration Services is routing some calls back to federal employees.

The typical caller has to wait more than 10 minutes to reach a live assistant on CIS' toll-free number, said Michael Aytes, the agency's director of information and customer services. That's more than six times the 1.5 minute goal CIS set for Pearson Government Solutions, the company running the phone service from call centers in Kansas, Kentucky and Virginia.

To bring the wait time closer to the target set under the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act, CIS has started forwarding a random 3 percent of calls to agency employees normally on reserve for more complex inquiries. The move is intended only as a temporary fix, Aytes said.

Pearson is having trouble retaining a call center staff large enough to answer incoming calls within the prescribed time frame, according to Aytes. Turnover among Pearson employees is "higher . . . than we would like to see," partly because the work is so challenging, said David Hakensen, a spokesman for the contractor.

"Some people don't want a job…that complex," Hakensen acknowledged. He declined to disclose the turnover rate.

Representatives staffing the toll-free line refer to more than 2,000 pages of scripts to answer questions about eligibility for immigration benefits, the application process and the status of cases. When Pearson won the customer service center contract two years ago, CIS provided 400 pages of scripts, Hakensen said.

But CIS had to expand the scripts fivefold to accommodate more complex questions and changes in immigration law and policy, Hakensen noted. Agency officials continue to modify the scripts, at a rate of roughly three changes per week, he said.

The customer service number also experienced a substantial increase in call volume, contributing to longer-than-desired wait times, according to Hakensen. In June 2003, CIS decided to route all public inquiries through the toll-free number, rather than give callers the option of dialing one of four agency service centers directly.

The change, intended to alleviate strains on service center phones, resulted in a significant jump in calls to the national toll-free number. But since then the call volume has remained relatively steady, Aytes said, aside from a spike in January 2004 after President Bush proposed a new immigration program for temporary workers.

Nevertheless, waiting time, one of four GPRA standards, including quality of responses, reflected in Pearson's performance-based agreement, is still "nowhere close to our requirements," Aytes said. On all other counts, Pearson is performing up to par, he added.

Aytes termed the excessive wait a "very serious issue to us," and said CIS is working with Pearson to reduce that time. But if the problem isn't resolved, termination of the contract is not out of the question, Aytes said, adding that CIS is "exploring other solutions."

In response, Pearson is improving call center training and putting "applicants through a better screening process so that [they] have a better understanding of what the job entails," Hakensen said. The contractor is also finding ways to direct challenging inquiries to more experienced call center assistants.

But Mary Lynch, vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees' National Homeland Security Council, said CIS should step back and look critically at the decision to contract out the customer service line. About 40 percent of callers get so frustrated that they hang up before they even reach a live assistant, she said.

The callers who do reach an assistant don't always receive accurate or fully satisfactory answers. In part, that's because federal law prohibits the contract employees from accessing certain databases, she said.

Other questions relate to information in case files, according to Crystal Williams, a spokeswoman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a group critical of CIS' decision to send all public inquiries to the toll-free number. Those files usually reside at one of the agency's four service centers.

Contract workers pass inquiries they're unable to answer to federal employees. But the system is inefficient and relies on customer service representatives to take down accurate information and forward questions to the right place, Williams said.

Aytes agreed that some inquiries should go straight to employees with access to case paperwork, and said that CIS is installing technology to transfer callers directly to the agency's service centers in select circumstances. "We don't want an intermediary in the process unless it adds value or unless it's a valuable screening tool," he said.

The technology, scheduled for a December debut, will detect very specific types of questions best answered at service centers, Aytes said, and forward those inquiries automatically. If the new system proves helpful, CIS will consider applying the technology to more types of calls.