Wisconsin Tapping Call Center Outsourcers and New Hires to Clear Unemployment Bottlenecks

Across the United States, nearly three million people filed unemployment claims in mid-May, bringing the total two-month tally to more than 36 million out of work. This has led to state unemployment offices getting slammed with applications, requests and calls, and most of them are struggling to keep up. Millions of Americans have been unable to get their unemployment claims processed because of backlogs. According to a poll conducted by SurveyMonkey for The New York Times in May, more than half of those applying for unemployment benefits in recent weeks were unsuccessful.

In some cases, states have tapped outside call center and back-office services to help, but even this process has been slow, as many states have protracted and cumbersome processes for requesting bids from third-party suppliers.  The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development’s (DWD) recently announced that it has secured contracts with outside vendors to assist more claimants faster, according to local newspaper The Courier. According to Tyler Tichenor, with the UI communications team, the vendors were not contracted with earlier due to the state’s hiring process.

“For the call center that we are contracting with, we had to follow state bidding processes, which again, are lengthy and required by state law,” he told The Courier.

The state has brought teleservices providers Alorica and Beyond Vision onboard. Accelerated (News - Alert) training allowed 55 Alorica employees to begin taking calls on behalf of the DWD. Ultimately, there are plans to ramp up to 500 Alorica employees assisting. The second contractor, Beyond Vision, now employs 40 people handling calls specifically related to the federal pandemic unemployment assistance (PUA).

In addition, the Wisconsin DWD has cross-trained some employees to begin processing unemployment claims, and the agency has said it’s actively recruiting new call center workers to fill about 315 new positions. The agency is hoping to be fully staffed by mid-June.

“It is too early to surmise the increase in capacity but we expect to provide more timely service to more individuals as we increase our staffing in waves through mid-June,” said Tichenor. 

Edited by Maurice Nagle