Revenue and Customs: Telephone Services
The question
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the (a) average waiting time for people calling and (b) time people spent on hold for HMRC was in each of the last five years.
Answered by James Murray
HMRC telephony performance data, including the average speed of answering a customer’s call, is published on a quarterly basis and can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmrc-quarterly-performance-updates
The definition of ‘average speed of answering a customer’s call’ is the average time spent waiting in the queue for an adviser. This is time that the customer finished listening to HMRC’s automated messages and completed their selection from HMRC’s automated menu to the time when they get to speak to an adviser.
The below table shows the amount of time people spent on hold with HMRC – this is when a call has been answered by an adviser and the individual has subsequently been put on hold. The data covers the last five years, broken down by quarter:
2019 Q1 | 2019 Q2 | 2019 Q3 | 2019 Q4 |
1min 21s | 1min 6s | 1min 14s | 1min 6s |
2020 Q1 | 2020 Q2 | 2020 Q3 | 2020 Q4 |
1min 2s | 1min 9s | 1min 19s | 1min 28s |
2021 Q1 | 2021 Q2 | 2021 Q3 | 2021 Q4 |
1min 22s | 1min 25s | 1min 43s | 1min 33s |
2022 Q1 | 2022 Q2 | 2022 Q3 | 2022 Q4 |
1min 17s | 1min 8s | 1min 11s | 1min 10s |
2023 Q1 | 2023 Q2 | 2023 Q3 | 2023 Q4 |
1min 6s | 1min 6s | 1min 20s | 1min 12s |
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