SMI ; UC

Altior

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82175732#Comment_82175732

Yes, that's now been corrected however, and was corrected around a week into my second AP. So if for some reason it was a blocker originally, it's not any longer as both live months show a payment. Doesn't explain why they are still misinformed.

huckster

Because DWP have contracts with outsourcing companies to answer the calls and they are not fully trained.

The main trade union for DWP staff PCS are currently balloting on strike action and one of the issues is lack of staff resources.

sammyjammy

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82176116#Comment_82176116

Thats not true, all calls to DWP are answered by DWP staff, telephony staff have limited knowledge by design, its their job to answer basic queries, anything else will go to another team for a callback.

Robbie64

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82176569#Comment_82176569

I was under the impression that some calls were answered by call centre staff employed by a third party, working on behalf of the DWP. I'm also sure that this outsourcing has been a regular thing since the national DWP telephony service was introduced back in 2007.

KxMx

I phoned Attendance Allowance this year and got a contact centre- they take details of what you need help with then send on to the actual department staff.

Altior

My experience with the phone support has been predominately good. The flaw in the system is that you can never speak or communicate with the person that has it in their gift to fix their errors.

The original LCWRA error was the most pressing error, so whilst I was persisting with my intended SMI application, I didn't push hard on it until the immediate payments issue was resolved.

They've obfuscated on this SMI application for so long now, I'll get my third payment early next month anyway. It looks like there's nothing I can do to initiate the application until then, they will therefore get what they want. It's beyond frustrating, if their internal policy is now that you can't even start the application until your third payment, then they should make that policy public, instead of presenting false guidance.

NedS

@Altior wrote:

My experience with the phone support has been predominately good. The flaw in the system is that you can never speak or communicate with the person that has it in their gift to fix their errors.

It's not a flaw, it's efficiency. Fixing stuff is a skilled role and you want those people who do have it within their gift to fix stuff spending their time fixing stuff, not answering phone calls. However, I appreciate it may not appear very efficient from your PoV as the person seeking to get stuff fixed.

Generally, I would try to avoid telephony on UC and use the journal instead, as UC was always designed to be a digital service.

huckster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82176569#Comment_82176569

It is true. DWP uses Teleperformance and Serco.

Altior

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82177207#Comment_82177207

I was heavily involved in support in a finance capacity. Probably helps to explain why I've had so much patience with them, but it has ran out! The business I worked for was a fledgling SaaS when I joined the team, so I played a significant role in evolving their support procedures. It is somewhat analogous, as one could replace accounting standards for law. We had lots of users who didn't understand accounting, that overlapped with how they expected the product to work. I'm sure lots of people need benefits/UC support that don't understand benefits law/legislation.

I totally get that lots of 'idiots' claim lots of things, a lot of it misinformed. And an organisation needs a support filter to weed the nonsense and misunderstanding out before it gets to the genuine subject experts. However, in both of my examples where I have clearly identified flaws, they are very basic (no expert needed), and the correct information is publicly available.

In my former business, the front line support agent would raise a case internally, having identified what needs to be fixed and would then be the customer's advocate internally ie own the query (unless they were absent for whatever reason). Something more complex might take time, but for example where LCWRA is palpably missing from an UC claim for someone who is already in the ESA support group, after I raised it that should have been corrected inside 48 hours. Instead I'm left chasing journal shadows for over a month, struggling to get them to even acknowledge the issue, and it ends up that a whole different branch of benefits gets it resolved via the back door. So much wasted resource for something that is a simple fix. Even better if they didn't mess it up in the first place, obviously!

So in my SMI query, the telephone agent can see I'm right, carried out a search on their system (perhaps they now use AI but they typed it into something on their system that said I was eligible to apply before the waiting time) to confirm this. However, apparently all they can do is raise it with a case manager, the same case manager with the same misunderstanding. It's as if the case manager has completely ignored what the phone agent has identified. And seems to think I'm an idiot by repeating their mistake.

Anyhow, I've mentally abandoned getting this fixed now. I've requested a leader to reach out to me via phone, to the phone support and via the journal. I will still raise the formal complaint on Monday via the web portal if this doesn't happen.