The physical visits to EFKA are over

Of Dimitris Katsaganis

The aim of the unified call center (line 1555) is to further facilitate the employees of EFKA to deal with other work items – such as the issuance of pensions – and the gradual abolition of the mandatory physical presence of citizens in its branches (line 1555), which was put into full operation yesterday.

This is reported by EFKA circles in Capital.gr, explaining that with the full operation of line 1555, the leadership of the Ministry of Labor tends to “extend a helping hand” to the employees of the funds, as it shifts even more the service of the insured and the employers from them to its employees. single call center.

Furthermore, the same sources point out that through line 1555 but also the other measures which the Ministry has already taken. Labor (eg myEFKAlive service, digital services, etc.) serves the goal of phasing out physical visits for more and more transactions with the funds.

More specifically, the goal is for more and more transactions to be made remotely, ie without the need for the personal presence of the insured or the employer in a branch of EFKA.

As noted yesterday, during the presentation of the full operation of line 1555, the Minister of Labor, Mr. Kostis Hatzidakis, “insured persons, pensioners and employees will no longer need and should no longer call individual services and stores. All the information they need will be given through 1555”, he added.

He stressed that “this is not just a big call center, but a personalized information system based on the so-called ticketing. In the 100 days that it has been piloted in 1555 so far, about 400,000 calls have been made and 96% have been served. “.

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 tackling outstanding pensions – from the first moment I came to the Ministry.

EFKA alone is required to serve more than 6.5 million directly insured and retired people every day. If we add the number of indirectly insured but also the citizens who trade with the other institutions, then the public that is potentially covered since 1555 reaches the whole of the Greek population “.

Describing the “before” and the “after” of 1555, the Minister of Labor underlined that “until now we had scattered telephone exchanges and many individual telephone lines, without substantial control. answered just 800 calls a day, with an average standby time of 20 minutes.

He could not answer 1/3 of the calls either because he did not have enough staff during peak hours or because the citizens got tired of waiting in their handset and hung up!

We are therefore called upon to address 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 complete service mechanism, a line “to find an edge”.

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

• Since the trial launched in July, the number has answered approximately 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, a sixfold number.

And where the average waiting time was 20 minutes now it has landed at 15 seconds. “Since they did not pick up the phones or pick them up with an average waiting time of half an hour, EFKA has started calling the citizen himself to give him an answer to his question”, Mr. Hatzidakis noted characteristically.

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 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 having already taken advantage of the measure.

• The information system “Ergani” is being upgraded with the resources of the Recovery Fund that will facilitate the work of thousands of professionals, insured and employees.