VA's study shows callers mostly get wrong answers

Some VA workers were also dismissive, unhelpful or rude to those who called.
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- A veteran who turns to the Department of Veterans Affairs for information about benefits might want to get a second opinion.
According to the VA's own data, people who call the agency's regional offices for help and advice are more likely to receive completely wrong answers than completely right ones.
To see how well its employees answer typical questions from the public, VA benefits experts called in 2004 each of the agency's U.S. regional offices, which process veterans' disability claims. The so-called mystery callers, saying they were relatives or friends of veterans inquiring about possible benefits, made a total of 1,089 calls. Almost half the time they got answers that the VA said were either completely incorrect or minimally correct.
According to an internal VA memo on the mystery-caller program that's buried deep in the department's Web site, 22 percent of the answers the callers got were "completely incorrect," 23 percent were "minimally correct" and 20 percent were "partially correct." Nineteen percent of the answers were "completely correct," and 16 percent were "mostly correct."
The program also found that some VA workers were dismissive of some callers and unhelpful or rude to others.
One caller, for example, said, "My father served in Vietnam in 1961 and 1962. Is there a way he can find out if he was exposed to Agent Orange?" The VA's response, according to the VA memo: "He should know if they were spreading that chemical out then. He would be the only one to know. OK [hung up laughing]."
The memo said the response was "completely incorrect" because it gave no information -- and also was "rude and unprofessional."
Some improvements
The 2004 survey found improvements in some categories compared with a similar study with identical questions in 2002. Timeliness improved, but scores on "willingness to help" and "courtesy/professionalism" dropped. VA workers also used "too much jargon," confusing to many veterans, the memo said.
VA officials acknowledge that the agency needs to do better. Daniel Cooper, the department's top benefits official, said in a memo to the VA regional offices that the results of the mystery-caller program "are below expectations and are disappointing to the organization. ... We must be able to provide prompt service and give correct answers with the courtesy and professionalism that our customers deserve."
This week, VA officials said they'd taken steps since 2004 to improve their performance, among other things setting up a small pilot program to monitor employees silently as they answered veterans' questions.
Although the VA said the pilot program improved performance, thus far it has been used in only four out of 57 regional offices. Other offices are scheduled to begin the silent monitoring by the end of fiscal 2006.
Beyond that, the VA said it was working to improve its service by boosting training and using role-playing exercises for some phone calls with the public. Other quality-improvement programs are expected to be put into place in 2006 and 2007.