A week before the Christmas period the National Audit Office (NAO) published its report, 'HMRC: Customer service performance' which concluded that, despite certain improvements to arrangements for answering calls from taxpayers, the departments current performance represents poor value for money.
HMRC Helplines
In 2011-12 HMRC answered 74% of phone calls, against an interim target of 58%. This self-imposed target drew criticism from Labour MP and Public Accounts Committee chair, Margaret Hodge, who suggested that the Revenue's own targets were “too soft”. The writer, on this rare occasion, finds himself agreeing with Hodge because, by their own admission, HMRC is operating below industry levels for call centres. The NAO also consider this level of service to be low and point out that 20 million calls (including calls where taxpayers rang back because they did not get through first time) were not answered.
Those callers that did manage to get through to HMRC during 2011-12 had to wait, on average, just under 5 minutes to speak to an adviser. Between April and September 2011, 6.5 million taxpayers waited longer than 10 minutes before their call was answered.
Depending on the tariff they pay their phone company, callers are charged from when their call is connected even if they are held in a queue. The NAO estimates that it cost taxpayers £33 million in call charges while they are in the queue. The estimated value of taxpayers' time whilst held in the queue is £103 million.
Most of HMRC's numbers are still 0845 numbers which result in callers being charged by the minute and proceeds going to service provider Cable & Wireless. Margaret Hodge exclaimed that this was “totally unacceptable” and in a second rare moment the writer again concurs with her. HMRC are, however, investigating alternatives as it negotiates its new telephony contract and estimates that taxpayers would save £13 million annually if all 0845 numbers were replaced with cheaper 03 numbers.
So far in 2012-13, HMRC has improved its handling of post but its performance in handling calls has been varied.
HMRC has plans to achieve service targets but the NAO believes these are ambitious given its previous performance and its spending review commitments to reduce costs by 25%. Despite this the NAO believes that by the end of 2012-13 and during 2013-14, HMRC could achieve its target of answering 90% of calls. This will, however, require a large redeployment of back-office processing staff to answering telephones as by 2014-15, the Revenue will have reduced numbers of contact centre staff. There is also uncertainty about the impact on call volumes of large scale changes to the tax system, such as the introduction of Real Time Information.
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said, "The taxpayers and claimants who phone HMRC do not have a choice about whether they interact with the department. Despite some welcome improvements, HMRC has acknowledged that its performance in providing services to the public has been unacceptable.
"HMRC faces difficult decisions about whether it should aspire to meet the service performance standards of a commercial organization. It could do only by spending significantly more money or becoming substantially more cost effective."
Hopefully, HMRC's resolution to improve its customer service will not be abandoned as quickly as many of us give up on our own well intentioned New Year’s resolutions.
Since starting our business in nov 2010 We have tried phoning HMRC numerous times and have never been able to get through.