K. Hatzidakis: In full operation o Unique Citizen Service Number-1155

“Everything is changing in the service of the citizens by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, EFKA, OAED and OPEC”. This was noted today by the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Kostis Hatzidakis, presenting the operation of the Unified Service Number 1555.

“Insured people, retirees and employees will no longer need and should no longer call individual services and stores. All the information they need will be provided through 1555,” he added. He stressed that “It is not just a large call center, but a personalized information system based on the so-called ticketing. In the 100 days that it has piloted in 1555 so far, about 400,000 calls have been made and 96% have been served. “Chaos is beginning to take its place in the organization, in the system and in the method with the ultimate benefit of the citizen. This is called social policy in practice!”

As Mr. Hatzidakis stressed, “the need for immediate and quality service to the citizens was more than imperative and one of my top priorities – along with dealing with outstanding pensions – from the first moment I came to the Ministry. Only EFKA “It is called to serve more than 6.5 million directly insured and retirees every day. If we add the number of indirectly insured and citizens who deal with other institutions, then the public potentially covered since 1555 reaches the entire Greek population.” .

Analyzing the situation that the new four-digit number is coming to fundamentally change, he said that “while we are called to serve so many millions of citizens, we are in the first place in complaints and grievances to the Ombudsman, with EFKA being dragged daily on television and social networks for downed phones and the inability of citizens to be served, often forcing them to travel miles away from their place of residence to visit the nearest branch. He called on us to act immediately and to adopt a single service number capable of serving thousands of citizens every day. ”

The “before” and the “after” of 1555

Describing the “before” and the “after” of 1555, the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs underlined that “until recently we had scattered telephone exchanges and many individual telephone lines, without substantial control. The old telephone exchange of EFKA, for example, operated with He answered only 800 calls a day, with an average waiting time of 20 minutes, and could not answer 1/3 of the calls either because he did not have enough staff during peak hours or because citizens were tired of waiting in their handset and hung up. So we were called to face a situation of non-service and the urgent need to find an immediate solution in the midst of a pandemic, so we chose to create a comprehensive service mechanism, a line “to find an end”.

Deloitte undertook the implementation of the project following an invitation to the 5 largest companies in the industry (PWC, Grant Thornton, KPMG, E&Y), with the participation of the three largest call center providers, Cosmote / Evalue, Teleperformance and Mediatel, which have international experience, know-how and sufficient staff for the needs of such a large undertaking.

The numbers

During the presentation of the events of 1555 so far, it was emphasized that:

-Since the trial operation of the number started in July, it has answered about 400,000 calls.

-The percentage of answered calls reaches 99%. Of these, 84.4% answered at the first level, ie by the answering machines themselves.

-12.8% were answered at the second level by the support teams of each body and the remaining 2.8% of the questions are pending to be answered by the services.

-990 employees cooperate daily in the new mechanism, of which 320 are employees of the companies and the rest come from the Ministry and the Organizations.

“From where we had call centers with public hours and with a charge for the citizen, now we have a phone number that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, free for all. Where we had 800 calls a day at EFKA, now they are answered daily 4,700 calls, which is six times the number, and where the average waiting time was 20 minutes, it has now landed at 15 seconds. “he calls on the citizen to give him an answer to his question. We are talking about a complete reversal of reality!”, Mr. Hatzidakis noted characteristically.

He made special mention of the control systems that the new mechanism incorporates, as it monitors the course of service of the questions – which is done on three levels – from the beginning to the end. “There is targeting, strict deadlines and control everywhere. Because every call is ‘charged’ to an employee or group of employees.”

The next steps

The Minister then analyzed the overall strategy implemented to upgrade the service of citizens by the Ministry of Labor and its supervised bodies. As he said:

A special mobile application for 1555 will be launched soon, as well as the ability to chat through its website.

The number of electronic services is constantly expanding. Indicatively, EFKA and OAED have about 50 electronic services each. For both parties, this means 4.5 million fewer branch visits each month.

The cooperation with the KEP is strengthened with the addition of new services of EFKA, OAED and OPEC. More than 250,000 citizens have visited KEP for transactions with these three bodies in recent months

The websites of the Ministry and the other bodies are being upgraded.

The myOAEDlive and myEFKAlive service was implemented, which will soon be extended to OPEC.

Electronic appointments were established at EFKA with 850,000 citizens already using the measure.

The upgrade of PS ERGANI is proceeding with the resources of the Recovery Fund that will facilitate the work of thousands of professionals, insured and employees.

Our immediate strategic goal is for institutions such as EFKA to provide important services that are provided both in a natural and digital way, only digitally. This is already happening in OAED for almost all of its services. “In this way we will strengthen the digital profile of EFKA and we will decongest even more the branches, improving the daily life of both citizens and employees”, noted Mr. Hatzidakis.

“Do not call the branches. Call 1555”

Kostis Hatzidakis asked the citizens to call in 1555 and not the branches of EFKA to have better service, noting that most telephone lines of the branches will be abolished and all calls will have to pass through 1555. “Bet from From now on, 1555 is to become a part of our daily lives, and our goal is the experiences of extreme suffering, anger and resentment to give way to quality, reliable and European-level service, as we now have the tool to gradually heal a wound. “and a permanent source of complaints and grievances that are inextricably linked to the daily life of the citizen”, concluded the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs.