The ICAEW has welcomed publication of HMRC contact centre performance statistics as part of ‘wider efforts to improve HMRC’s service standards and in particular highlighting concerns with the existing call centre performance’.
Lin Homer, HMRC’s chief executive, said in August that she was ‘reprioritising’ resources to enable investment of £34m to recruit up to 1,000 additional call centre staff over eight months, ‘without impacting our other core customer services’.
Data will be published quarterly, comprising ‘basic performance and management’ information and ‘customer experience results’, HMRC announced yesterday. The figures show that there were more than 22m call attempts in the quarter ended June 2012. Just over 15m calls were ‘handled’ (answered by an adviser or ‘dealt with successfully by an automated message’). Forty-three per cent of calls were answered within two minutes, but 27% were not answered within 10 minutes.
David Gauke, exchequer secretary to the Treasury, told MPs in June that HMRC was aiming to achieve ‘90% of call attempts handled’ by 2014/15. ‘In 2011/12, HMRC significantly improved the number of call attempts handled to 74%, compared to 48% in the previous year,’ he said.
An improvement in contact centre performance was one of several recommendations made by the Commons Treasury Committee in July 2011. The committee warned that respect for the tax system might be undermined if communicating with HMRC became too difficult. Dissatisfaction had been building for some years in relation to access to advice over the telephone and responses to post.
Publication of the statistics was ‘a direct response to a key recommendation made by the ICAEW and others’, the ICAEW said yesterday. Frank Haskew, head of the ICAEW Tax Faculty, said: ‘The ICAEW and other professional bodies have worked closely with HMRC to deliver this key Treasury Committee recommendation.
‘As a direct result of our discussions, HMRC also announced that £34m of funding would be reprioritised to fund an extra 1,000 staff to improve call centre performance. For the future we need to ensure that these improvements will be sustained and do not result in a decline in service standards elsewhere. We will continue to work with HMRC to help them make further much needed improvements to service standards.’
Paul Aplin, chairman of the Faculty’s Technical Committee, told Tax Journal that call centre performance had been a major issue. Publication of the figures was ‘an important step in terms of transparency’.
The ICAEW has welcomed publication of HMRC contact centre performance statistics as part of ‘wider efforts to improve HMRC’s service standards and in particular highlighting concerns with the existing call centre performance’.
Lin Homer, HMRC’s chief executive, said in August that she was ‘reprioritising’ resources to enable investment of £34m to recruit up to 1,000 additional call centre staff over eight months, ‘without impacting our other core customer services’.
Data will be published quarterly, comprising ‘basic performance and management’ information and ‘customer experience results’, HMRC announced yesterday. The figures show that there were more than 22m call attempts in the quarter ended June 2012. Just over 15m calls were ‘handled’ (answered by an adviser or ‘dealt with successfully by an automated message’). Forty-three per cent of calls were answered within two minutes, but 27% were not answered within 10 minutes.
David Gauke, exchequer secretary to the Treasury, told MPs in June that HMRC was aiming to achieve ‘90% of call attempts handled’ by 2014/15. ‘In 2011/12, HMRC significantly improved the number of call attempts handled to 74%, compared to 48% in the previous year,’ he said.
An improvement in contact centre performance was one of several recommendations made by the Commons Treasury Committee in July 2011. The committee warned that respect for the tax system might be undermined if communicating with HMRC became too difficult. Dissatisfaction had been building for some years in relation to access to advice over the telephone and responses to post.
Publication of the statistics was ‘a direct response to a key recommendation made by the ICAEW and others’, the ICAEW said yesterday. Frank Haskew, head of the ICAEW Tax Faculty, said: ‘The ICAEW and other professional bodies have worked closely with HMRC to deliver this key Treasury Committee recommendation.
‘As a direct result of our discussions, HMRC also announced that £34m of funding would be reprioritised to fund an extra 1,000 staff to improve call centre performance. For the future we need to ensure that these improvements will be sustained and do not result in a decline in service standards elsewhere. We will continue to work with HMRC to help them make further much needed improvements to service standards.’
Paul Aplin, chairman of the Faculty’s Technical Committee, told Tax Journal that call centre performance had been a major issue. Publication of the figures was ‘an important step in terms of transparency’.
