Revenue and Customs: Telephone Services
The question
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many and what proportion of customers have made a complaint about the customer telephone service in each year since 2015.
Answered by James Murray
Data on the number of complaints relating to telephony services is held in line with HMRC’s retention policy.
Reporting year | Number of complaints relating to telephony services | Number of telephony complaints as a proportion of all complaints received (%) |
2015-16 | Not held | Not held |
2016-17 | Not held | Not held |
2017-18 | Not held | Not held |
2018-19 | 1,244 | 1.74% |
2019-20 | 1,340 | 2.04% |
2020-21 | 2,137 | 2.72% |
2021-22 | 2,032 | 2.53% |
2022-23 | 2,634 | 2.89% |
2023-24 | 8,037 | 8.72% |
In March 2023, HMRC changed from only recording the primary cause of a complaint to recording all contributing causes and factors of a complaint.
HMRC has previously faced challenges in delivering good customer service.
In 2024-25 HMRC has increased its telephony ‘adviser attempts handled’ and decreased wait times. HMRC’s latest performance information is published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmrc-monthly-performance-reports#reporting-year-2024-to-2025
HMRC is encouraging more of its customers to use its online services to complete tasks quickly and easily online. Satisfaction with HMRC’s online services is consistently above 80%.
HMRC operates a flexible resourcing model where staff are deployed across various types of customer service work throughout the year. This allows HMRC to allocate resources to support customers where and when they need it most across different channels, including helplines, post correspondence and webchat. Given the dynamic nature of HMRC’s workforce, their staffing records do not segregate helpline resources separately. Telephony services are funded from HMRC’s overall funding settlement.
HMRC started reporting on disconnections after 70 minutes when they introduced a new telephony system. Information on the number of disconnections from March 2023 and for April 2023 to March 2024 is published in the HMRC Annual report and accounts 2023 to 2024: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hmrc-annual-report-and-accounts-2023-to-2024
The average time to answer a customer telephone call for each year since 2015 is published as part of HMRC’s annual reports and accounts: 2023 to 2024 – historical data series (see above link).
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