LANSING – The Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency was still having trouble answering its phone last year, according to a new audit.

Over a roughly one-year period sampled in 2018 and 2019, more than one in four callers — 28% — gave up before talking to a customer service representative, Michigan Auditor General Doug Ringler said in a report released Tuesday.

An inability to get a live person on the phone was a major frustration during the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency's false fraud debacle. The agency, using an automated system for fraud detection, falsely accused tens of thousands of Michigan residents of committing unemployment insurance fraud.

The latest numbers related to caller hang-ups are actually a slight improvement from a 2016 audit, which found that 29% of callers gave up while they were on hold.

In a response, the agency said it installed a new phone system in September 2019 that is resulting in far fewer abandoned calls. Only about 9% of callers now hang up while waiting for a customer service representative, spokeswoman Lynda Robinson said.

More:State of Michigan's mistake led to man filing bankruptcy

More:State of Michigan's mistake led to man filing bankruptcy

The state has acknowledged that at least 20,000 Michigan residents — and possibly as many as 40,000 — were wrongly accused of fraud between 2013 and 2015 by a $47-million state computer system that the state operated without human supervision and with an error rate as high as 93%.

Those wrongly accused of fraud through robo-adjudications by the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System (MiDAS) were subjected to highest-in-the-nation quadruple penalties and many were subjected to aggressive collection techniques such as wage garnishment and seizure of income tax refunds after the state, in many cases, wrongly said they owed tens of thousands of dollars in benefits and penalties.

Litigation continues over the fiasco.

Tuesday's audit, which was a follow-up on the 2016 audit, said that between July 1, 2018, and June 30, 2019, 311,186 calls were made to the agency's call center during six sampled weeks. Of those, 66,461 calls were routed to hold for a customer service representative.

The agency's data shows that 18,381 of those calls, or 28%, were abandoned before a customer service representative came on the line, the audit said.

For the 244,725 calls that were not routed to hold for a customer service representative, the agency did not have data to show whether they were successfully routed to self-service features, or whether those calls were also abandoned, the audit said.

In its response, the agency said its new phone system includes a chat function, which can be used online or with mobile phones, among other features.

"As a result, the customer wait times and abandoned calls have dramatically improved," the agency said.

The new system also has an option for callers, instead of holding, to leave their numbers and receive a call back, without losing their places in line, Robinson said.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4. Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter.