Has Customer Service Actually Improved at the Social Security Administration? 

We’ve got good news and bad news.

The recently published Social Security Trustees report paints a worrying picture of the program’s long-term financial outlook, with Congressional action required before 2034 to prevent sizable benefit cuts. It’s an important message, but it somewhat obscured another story, namely the current state of customer service quality after a period of significant change within the Social Security Administration. 

The agency’s commissioner Frank Bisignano testified in Congress last week, just one day after the Trustees report landed, telling lawmakers that the under 5-minute average wait time on the SSA’s 800-number achieved in May 2026 was the best level in a decade, down 89% from the all-time monthly high of 42 minutes measured a year earlier. Bisignano attributed the achievement to a combination of technology innovation and the adoption of a customer service mindset taken from the private sector. 

Democratic lawmakers, policy experts and consumer advocacy groups have questioned the veracity of Bisignano’s testimony, suggesting the metrics are probably obscuring deeper problems caused by significant staff cuts and decades of chronic underinvestment. Some independent observers, however, seem to think that service conditions have at least marginally improved, and that’s a good thing for the more than 330 million current and future beneficiaries of the program. 

Room for Improvement 

Bisignano’s statement included a number of positive metrics:

• Average field office wait times have shrunk 30%, from 30 minutes at the end of fiscal year 2024 to 21 minutes so far this year, with 6 minutes of waiting for those who schedule an appointment.
• The initial disability claims backlog has decreased 32%, with disability hearing wait times down by nearly 80 days compared with FY2024.

Kathleen Romig, senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said that while the numbers are impressive, she worries the commissioner is being selective, and even potentially misleading. “I hope I’m wrong and conditions really have improved so dramatically, but it strains credulity after they slashed staff and made so many other significant changes,” Romig told Advisor Upside. “SSA faced serious challenges when the second Trump administration started. Leland Dudek, who was acting commissioner at the time, was impressively honest about that.” 

Technology changes and a redeployment of staff toward manning the phone banks may have improved certain parts of Social Security’s operations, Romig said, but it’s hard for her to believe things are suddenly as rosy as Bisignano’s testimony would suggest.  

The Skeptical Take. Social Security Works, a group that advocates for the expansion of Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement that its experts don’t believe Bisignano’s message about vastly improved customer service. The group points out that Social Security has lost over 8,000 workers during the second Trump administration, including “many of the most experienced and skilled.”