Massachusetts SNAP Administration Corrective Action Plan June 19, 2015

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1 Root Causes of Deficiencies Statewide Assistance Line The Statewide Assistance Line infrastructure has been insufficient to handle demand. Prior to the call center, clients left voic s for their assigned case manager, reached full voic inboxes, and bounced around trying to reach a person who could help. New service levels are intended to eliminate this sort of customer frustration, however the gap between new service and old service was greater than anticipated. Adequately staffing the call center while keeping up with case processing has proven challenging. Untimely processing and incorrect case closures are contributing to the call volume. The IVR system and My Account Page (MAP) have not reached their full potential to provide self-service. Strategies for Addressing Root Causes of Deficiencies Phone line enhancements will allow DTA to provide better customer service to those calling our assistance line, and are essential to BPR success. Implemented June 3: Caller greeting was shortened from approximately five minutes to two and a half minutes. Authentication requirement reduced. Previously callers would have to enter 30 numbers, including their EBT card number. Today callers enter 13 numbers, which does not include an EBT card number. Call Center Migration, June Increased flexibility for adding additional staff to the call center to allow for improved agility in responding to high call volumes. Enhanced training on call center tools has been completed in advance of migration. Technical improvements to enhance call quality and minimize dropped calls. Plan for Monitoring and Evaluation/Responsible Parties DTA Staff: Yasmin Otero (Project Management), Leslie Clark (IT) Monitoring and Evaluation: The Assistance Line is monitored by DTA to identify spikes in call volumes, systems issues, and staffing issues. Reports are sent to local office managers to provide information on call volume and staffing support. DTA will evaluate the efficacy of its improvement efforts by completing a biweekly review of key call center metrics, including metrics identified in DTA s investment plan; not limited to (Attachment 1): Calls Requesting a Live Agent Calls Blocked Calls Abandoned Calls Reaching a Live Agent Average Answer Speed Average Handle Time Complaints Related to Assistance Line Utilization of Call Back Feature Client Feedback Staff Feedback DTA will use phone queue data 1

2 Improved management reporting tools that will enhance oversight and measurement of service delivery metrics. Caller will receive an estimated wait time (EWT) message upon entering the call wait queue starting Monday, June 22. Scheduled for August 15: A Courtesy Call Back feature which will allow callers in queue to request a call back when a case manager becomes available, thus reducing time spent on hold and lowering caller frustration. Additional Assistance Line Strategies: DTA will identify improvements to call routing, staff skill assignments, and scope of services provided by phone to improve call handling efficiency (i.e., determining complexity of calls and routing to most appropriate staff members for resolution). DTA and the Public Consulting Group (PCG) have concluded that the phone system cannot be looked at in a vacuum. The processing queue drives all other queues and if not handled timely, has the potential to result in an overwhelmed phone system. (Attachment 2) to ensure clients and applicants receive prompt customer service. The goal is to provide caller options when there is a wait time for connecting to a DTA case manager. High volume messages, which essentially disconnect the caller because the call system wait capacity has been exceeded, should play only on rare instances beyond DTA s control (e.g., phone system outage). Use of the attached report will allow DTA to strategically plan where to reallocate staff resources to meet DTA business and caller needs. The half hour metrics allow DTA to drill down to specific time periods as to when and why calls may overwhelm the system. 2

3 To address the concerns of FNS, DTA must focus more effort on processing work more quickly and efficiently. Doing so will ease client confusion and lessen the need to call the assistance line or come to a local office. This in turn, will free up DTA staff to continue processing case maintenance work. DTA and PCG are working to develop specific metrics of acceptable wait times, abandoned calls, and other assistance line data points. FNS notes that DTA sees a dropped call rate around 60% - this figure may have been true at the outset of BPR, but does not accurately reflect the current situation. While DTA understands and shares the concern of clients having trouble getting through on the phones, substantial progress has been and will continue to be made in this area. For example, during the week of June 1, 2015 the average percent of callers being dropped was 6.5% - while DTA strives for no callers being dropped, developing metrics from real data is the only way to ensure progress continues. DTA is requesting that FNS provide information on strategies employed by 3

4 other states to meet a 1% blocked call rate 95% of the time. Additionally, it would be productive for DTA to analyze any call center best practices from other states that FNS is willing to share as it relates to metrics. As DTA continues to focus on the phone queue, Commissioner McCue has identified work groups to further examine strategies to enhance phone line service. Untimely Case Processing BPR Adequately staffing the Assistance Line has been the Department s priority since BPR launch. However, attempting to significantly increase customer service levels has come at the expense of case processing. Insufficient staff resources have resulted in an inability to address every priority task in a timely manner. Field staff has not all overwhelmingly bought-in to the BPR model. Buy in specifically needs to increase so workers feel ownership of BPR assigned work, and bringing cases as far as they can. To date there is a lack of focus on same As mentioned in DTA s approved investment plan there have been longstanding challenges with wait times and backlogs. DTA is committed to meeting these challenges. PCG has been brought on board to offer a third party assessment of DTA and identify areas that can be improved upon within the new business model. DTA began training 73 new case managers on May 11 in order to meet projected needs. DTA will increase the frequency of new job opportunities and expand training class sizes to offset projected attrition. Classroom graduation date is June 19. The next class of 64 new hires will start July 6, DTA plans to expand the Simplified DTA Staff: Anne O Sullivan (Policy), Paul Sutliff (Field Operations) Monitoring and Evaluation: DTA staff meet daily to discuss immediate business needs and to ensure work is being prioritized correctly. The Commissioner s office will be responsible for ensuring policies and procedures are put into place to process cases timely. DTA will: Monitor the process of moving certain households to simplified reporting. The goal being reducing workload and ease of client access without sacrificing program integrity. Work with PCG to offer an objective look 4

5 day processing and first contact resolution. The case supervisor position has not adequately evolved with the new business model, and is still focused primarily on approving cases at disposition. The general approach to treating all workers and all work equally has prevented the Department from maximizing the skills and capabilities of its work force. The new business model was intended to match worker skills with queues, processes, and complexity, but that potential has not yet been realized. Reporting (SR) recertification type to capitalize on reduced reporting requirements by moving almost all Change Reporter SNAP cases to SR. Additionally, there will be opportunities to increase certain households to a 24 month certification period. This change will both save work effort for staff and reduce the reporting burden for clients. The conversion process will consist of a combined gradual roll over with case manager review prior to changing the recertification type and a system generated change. The process is targeted to be completed by the end of February DTA estimates that approximately 374,000 SNAP AUs will benefit from this change to SR. Of these cases, 188,000 will be on a 12-month certification period and 180,000 will be on a 24-month certification period. This will: o Improve benefit access/customer experience. o Make reporting/verification requirements simpler. o Provide error protection. o Increase efficiency. o Ease administration. at benchmarks met and unmet, as well as strategies to fully realize the benefits of this new system. Pilot a processing center model in Springfield operational by 8/3/15. o PCG will offer an assessment of this model, working closely with the Commissioner s office as well as the Springfield processing center. o If successful, this model will be expanded across the state. Monitor prioritization, as this continues to be necessary to meet required timelines. o PCG will offer counsel as we look to capitalize on innovative strategies to ensure work is completed timely. Pilot moving away from supervisor approval and to a more strategic supervisory role that focuses on mentoring, training, and quality control. Final plan to be developed by 8/3/15. DTA will continue to analyze staffing needs in parallel to phone, processing, and in office data. 5

6 o Provide savings on mailings. The process for expanding SR will begin in July 2015 with data reports and continue through the summer and fall where DTA will review cases, determine those appropriate for conversion, notice clients, update BEACON, and continue reviewing cases for conversion. Overtime has been authorized to address the backlog and increase timely processing of cases. In addition to Saturday overtime, overtime during weekdays will be explored. Cash workers will be included in the overtime workforce. Mandatory SNAP refresher training will be deployed for any cash worker electing to take part in overtime. DTA will work with PCG to develop performance management framework aimed at helping staff adapt to the new model and providing the basis for continuous improvement. This tool will help monitor the quantity, quality, and progress of worker actions, and provide the basis for coaching staff on concepts such as first contact resolution, same day processing, and policy standardization. Document processing has been identified 6

7 as the key to BPR success. If documents are processed and clients get a determination, calls will not be needed, which will free up workers to stay on top of processing. DTA will identify improvements to routing and assigning processing and in-person work, which could include matching worker skill levels to transaction types (e.g. new application, recertification, address update, etc.). This is especially relevant given the large influx of new workers and the pilot processing center. Explore the use of non-merit workers to complement the DTA workforce. Work groups have been identified in the areas of supervision and accountability, document management, special populations, administration, and backlog processing to complement these efforts. Automated Wage Match Notices When discrepant income related data between DOR and DTA case information was detected, a notice was automatically sent to clients to request income Program integrity continues to be a goal of DTA, and as such this information continues to be monitored. In DTA s approved investment plan, reliance on DOR data was detailed. DTA is DTA Staff: Tom Massimo (Chief Operating Officer) Monitoring and Evaluation: The information provided by DOR matches provides crucial information. DTA has been reviewing this 7

8 verification. If the income verification was not received within 10 days, case closing procedures would be initiated. Due to the fact that the wage match was automated, staff did not review the data to determine if the information had already been client reported and whether it impacted the household s eligibility or benefit level. committed to a system that removes unneeded burdens on clients. In March 2015, DTA suspended the automated nature of the DOR wage match notice. FNS was informed of this decision immediately after the decision was made. Workers are now responsible for reviewing match information to properly disposition a case. A number of policy reminders have been sent to staff and reinforced with field management. DTA will continue to provide training to ensure that matches are being reviewed correctly. Federal law will now require DTA to implement the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH) match this fall. This system will provide DTA with income related information (new hire) but must also be implemented with caution to avoid the pitfalls that the DOR match caused. information to ensure it is acted upon correctly, when necessary. DTA will: Work with PCG to reevaluate the wage match. Continue manually reviewing data Reinforce policy refreshers to ensure matches are dispositioned correctly. Test any re-automation before any wage match notice is re-automated. Review the results of the FNS review (referred to in FNS May 5, 2015 letter) and incorporate recommendations into the DOR wage match reengineering. A workgroup has been identified to look closely at system enhancements, including work on match reengineering. Application of Policies and Procedures The misapplication of verification requirements can stem from a Ensuring workers, both new and seasoned are continuously trained and updated on new policy is vital to DTA. DTA Staff: Anne O Sullivan (Policy), Paul Sutliff (Field Operations) Monitoring and Evaluation: As mentioned in 8

9 misunderstanding of polices, a blurring of verification requirements between TAFDC and SNAP, and risk-averse staff who would rather ask for more than is needed to determine eligibility. Prior to BPR, SNAP web application processing and Bay State Combined Application Project cases were specialized functions restricted to a limited number of staff. In moving to the new model, all SNAP case managers are expected to complete this work. Training, both refresher and new training, is needed to stem these issues. DTA has begun offering SNAP refresher training to include the use of webinars on targeted topics such as mandatory verifications, matches, etc. The Training Unit staff is being expanded to adopt a regional training model which will include additional periodic refresher training for current employees to improve consistency and performance across the agency. The Processing Center to be established in Springfield will serve as a regional training hub focused on developing case processing proficiency. A verification tool will be developed and implemented that will provide case managers with a concise list of required/not required verifications and the preferred method of verifying (e.g. online data sources, documents, and collateral contacts). This will also function as a quality assurance monitoring tool for supervisors and managers. A webinar will be developed and deployed on verification policies and procedures to ensure proper staff policy application. DTA s investment plan, consistency is key to the success of BPR. To reach this goal DTA will: Continue to send training materials to staff regarding the areas identified by FNS. Deploy training webinars to reinforce training documents. With FNS assistance, the DTA Online Guide will be enhanced to ensure consistency with federal regulations and policies. Follow up from local office managers will be reinforced by the Commissioner s Office. When a Bay State Combined Application Project case has been reviewed by SSA, DTA will automatically extend the certification period. This will result is less disruption to the client and less required work for DTA. Work with PCG on performance and quality of work performed by DTA. This includes identifying training gaps and developing solutions. Work groups have been identified in the areas of training, and forms development. 9

10 Churn Rate Falling behind on case processing significantly contributes to churn, which was a problem for DTA prior to BPR. Other initiatives, such as the DOR wage match, have also exacerbated the problem. Many clients do not submit their recertification form on time. While clients are responsible for submitting their recertification promptly, the Department recognizes that notices can be confusing, and requirements and timelines may contribute to this issue. While churn does happen, it is in the best interest of all parties to ensure that churn is minimized. Closed client outreach has begun in order to determine the root causes of case closures and analyze the volume of closings. DTA shares FNS concern relative to the increased number of closed cases referenced in the time periods cited in the May 5 letter. While percentages of closed cases reopening are roughly the same in these time periods, the raw numbers of case closings do translate to reduced statewide caseloads. DTA will continue to analyze the abundance of data that BPR offers management. DTA Staff: Yasmin Otero (Project Management), Paul Sutliff (Field Operations), Sara Craven (Ombudsman), Anne O Sullivan (Policy) Monitoring and Evaluation: DTA will look to reduce churn and further drill down on root causes. DTA is committed to: Continuing closed case outreach. Run a report on a monthly basis to analyze churn data to inform management decisions. The DTA report card PCG is assisting in developing will include metrics on churn rate. This will be a helpful tool and will be available in July. The strategies identified to simplify administrative functions, continue overtime to process work, create uniformity across the agency, and to reduce over-verification will positively impact churn. 10