The Trump administration’s Social Security commissioner on Monday hit back at criticisms of “mismanagement” leveled by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., against the agency’s changes to its customer service practices.
Frank Bisignano, commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), responded to Warren’s criticisms in a letter exclusively reviewed by FOX Business ahead of its release. He defended the administration’s changes and wrote that the SSA is “experiencing a customer service turnaround after four years of long wait times and record backlogs under the Biden administration.”
“While I welcome your recent interest in customer service at SSA and the myriad of correspondences you sent my predecessor and me since President Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, I’m struck by how little you corresponded with the agency to express concern about deteriorating customer service during the previous administration,” Bisignano wrote to Warren.
The commissioner said Warren didn’t write to his Biden-era predecessors to address deteriorating wait times, which Bisignano said reached an all-time high of 42 minutes in November 2023, or the concerns raised by SSA staffers in employment satisfaction surveys.
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“With a new administration in office and across-the-board improvement in the performance data due to strong leadership, world-class management, and a new approach, which leverages technology, you now declare there is a customer service crisis at SSA. You further question the long-standing methodology behind the performance data, which is prepared by SSA’s dedicated career workforce and regularly reported to Congress across administrations,” he wrote.
Bisignano’s letter included SSA data showing that the average speed of answer on SSA’s national 800 number has improved from 27.6 minutes in fiscal year 2024, to 20 minutes in the Oct. 5, 2024, to May 7, 2025, period. It improved further to 10.4 minutes in the May 8 to July 25 period, and was even quicker at about 4.6 minutes in the July 21-25 period, according to his letter.
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He also included data for SSA field offices which showed wait times ranged between 28.3 and 30.9 minutes in fiscal year 2024, but declined to 26.3 minutes in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025. That trend continued in Q2, declining to 21.4 minutes from January to March and was further reduced to 20.9 minutes in Q3 from April through June.
Bisignano’s letter also indicated that the backlog of initial disability claims has been reduced to about 936,000 pending cases – a decrease of 26% from the all-time high of 1,269,713 in June 2024.
“Across all of our service indicators, the evidence is clear: better management is improving the customer experience on the phones, in the field offices, and online. Nothing in the data supports the irresponsible allegations of mismanagement and a customer service crisis at SSA,” he wrote.
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The commissioner added that his staff is available to analyze actual cases in which Warren has claimed the agency’s customer service has fallen short, inviting her to work with the SSA to address potential issues in the cases she has raised.
Bisignano invited Warren to meet with him on a visit to a SSA field office in Massachusetts on Aug. 22 and wrote, “I recognize the transformation in customer service that is occurring at SSA has been unimaginable for many years. I want you to see the progress we have made first-hand, as well as the hard work performed by our dedicated public servants.”
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