Social Security Scotland telephone call statistics: FOI release

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.


Information requested

For all questions between 1 November 2023 and 1 November 2024:

Request for information 1: The total number of calls Social Security Scotland has received?

Request for information 2: The number of calls where the caller has had to wait more than 30minutes to be connected? – Can I a breakdown of the length of each of these calls?

Request for information 3: The number of calls where the caller has had to wait more than 60minutes to be connected? - Can I a breakdown of the length of each of these calls?

Request for information 4: The longest time a caller has had to wait to be connected?

Response

To provide the data requested, we require to run reports from our telephony system. Our system holds data for the 12 rolling months prior to the requested report.

All of the below information is based on internal management information and has not yet been quality assured to the same standard as published information on telephony services.

Request for information 1:

The total number of calls connected in the period from 1 November 2023 to 21 November 2024 was 790,070.

Request for information 2 and 3:

The below table provides a breakdown of length of the call wait times during the period from 1 November 2023 to 21 November 2024.

Call wait time in minutes

Number of calls

Greater than 30, less than or equal to 40

40,262

Greater than 40, less than or equal to 50

15,286

Greater than 50, less than or equal to 60

5,268

Greater than 60, less than or equal to 70

1,517

Greater than 70, less than or equal to 80

587

Greater than 80, less than or equal to 90

105

Total calls answered with a call wait time of over 30 minutes.

63,025

Request for information 4:

Our records indicate the longest call waiting time for connected calls between 1 November 2023 to 21 November 2024 was 1 hour 28 minutes and 6 seconds.

You may find it helpful to know that we publish telephony and webchat management information on the Social Security Scotland Statistics page: Social Security Scotland - Telephony and Webchat management information to September 2024

We do also publish Insights reports which give average call waiting times across different periods. The most recent of these is published here: Social Security Scotland - Insights Research Findings – April 2022 to March 2023

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

Contact

Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000

The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG

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