[Vision2020] Veterans Deserve Better

[Tom Hansen]

>From the April 3, 2006 edition of the Army times -

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Veterans deserve better

Congressional hearings usually are staid — OK, boring — affairs. But a
startling statistic tumbled out of a recent House Veterans’ Affairs
Committee hearing:

When veterans call one of the Department of Veterans Affairs regional
offices with questions about VA benefits or programs, more than one in five
get answers that are dead wrong.

In a study compiled by VA in which officials posed as veterans to make
anonymous calls to their customer service staffers, only 19 percent of
responses were “completely correct,” while a full 22 percent were
“completely incorrect.” The rest fell in between.

Critics say part of the problem is unrealistic productivity goals, such as a
reputed rule that requires customer service representatives to spend no more
than three minutes on any call.

VA insists there is no “three-minute” rule — but admits workers are required
to handle at least 64 calls per day. If an eight-hour workday involves about
seven hours of work after accounting for bathroom breaks, smoke breaks,
coffee breaks and schmooze breaks, a customer service rep must handle about
nine calls per hour.

So it’s a 6½-minute rule — cold comfort for veterans seeking straight
answers.

Give VA credit for being upfront about the problem. And officials say
they’re working on it; a new computer system designed to give customer
service reps easier, quicker access to benefits information is in the works,
for example.

But clearly, more needs to be done, especially in light of the huge wave of
veterans flowing home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The only true solution is to hire more customer service reps and train them
more thoroughly.

It is unacceptable that the odds of veterans getting correct benefits
information from VA are low enough to qualify as a sucker bet.


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Senator Larry Craig
http://craig.senate.gov/webform.html

Senator Michael Crapo
webmail at crapo-iq.senate.gov

Representative Butch Otter
butch.otter at mail.house.gov

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho


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"In America, anybody can become president.  
That's one of the risks you take . . ."

- Adlai Stevenson

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