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 the last year.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson
HMRC telephony performance data, including the average speed of answering a customer’s call, is published on a regular 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 from the 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 average 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 past year, broken down by quarter:
2024-25 Q1 | 2024-25 Q2 | 2024-25 Q3 | 2024-25 Q4 |
1min 4s | 1min 25s | 1min 16s | 1min 15s |
HMRC are taking steps to make sure more of their services are digital, so customers can self-serve online. HMRC online services and the HMRC app are convenient to access and receive high customer satisfaction ratings. As more people use HMRC online services, advisers are freed up to support those with more complex queries and those who are digitally excluded.
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