£34 million to achieve HMRC call targets

HMRC’s Chief Executive, Lin Homer, has announced the recruitment of up to 1,000 additional contact centre staff, to achieve a target of answering 90 per cent of all calls two years earlier than planned.

Mrs Homer has planned a £9 million additional spending this year and up to £25 million in 2013-14 to reach the call centre industry standard two years earlier than HMRC originally promised to Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee.

The decision to invest in extra staff was taken after close consultation with the Joint Initiative on HMRC Service Delivery (JIHSD), which involves professional bodies and tax charities.

While call centre performance has improved significantly, from 48 per cent of all attempts handled in 2010/11 to 74 per cent in 2011/12, HMRC and JIHSD agreed that more needed to be done to provide a better calls service to customers.

Lin Homer said: “Our contact centres receive around 60 million phone calls a year and how well we operate this service is of huge importance to our customers.

“It is vital that when customers call us for help their call is answered – and in a reasonable time. The feedback we get is that the quality of the advice we give when people get through is good, but we haven’t been answering enough calls.

“Our target of achieving contact centre industry standards of 90 per cent of calls answered first time is the right target. But after hearing the views of customers, stakeholder bodies and our own staff, we have speeded up our timetable for achieving it.

“I believe that we should be providing this important level of customer service sooner, not later, and investment of up to £34 million will enable us to do this by the end of March 2013 and sustain service levels during the next two years, rather than wait until 2015 to achieve the target. It will also enable us to reduce call waiting times drastically.

“I am reprioritising our resources to make this additional investment possible, without impacting our other core customer services.

“We remain committed to offering more online services and other ways of serving customers, which will ultimately reduce their need to call us. But in the meantime, this investment will give customers what they deserve – a much more responsive HMRC.

“I am enormously grateful to our stakeholder partners for their constructive advice, guidance and support in helping us to prioritise this additional investment in contact centres.

“I also want to thank our staff who work hard to deliver a good service and this investment will help them deliver to the standard they want to achieve.”

Exchequer Secretary David Gauke MP said: “Although there has been an improvement in contact centre performance over the last couple of years, too many callers have faced unacceptable delays in getting through. I welcome this announcement which should result in a much improved service.”

Paul Aplin, Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and a member of the Joint Initiative on HMRC Service Delivery said: “Today’s announcement shows how effective the engagement between HMRC and the key stakeholders involved in this initiative has been. There is more to do but this is a really encouraging step forward.”