HMRC Contact Centres provide a national telephone service for dealing with enquiries from customers. The main aim of this research project is to measure the experience of customers using contact centres, in order to allow HMRC to better understand their needs and work to improve overall experience.
The survey started in October 2010 and covers all lines of business and contact centres. This report covers the results for April 2013 to March 2014; comparisons have been made to the results from April 2012 to March 2013 where possible.
Overall customer experience
Overall scores were very positive:
- 80% rated their overall experience as very good or fairly good. This had not changed significantly since the previous year.
- Experience of calling the helpline was better than expected for two-fifths of customers (40%) and in line with expectations for half of customers (49%). Compared with the 2012 to 2013 results, the proportion that rated their experience as better than expected increased by one percentage point.
Key Driver Analysis (KDA) revealed that to improve the overall experience score further, getting things right the first time and ease of getting in touch were key areas for improvement. The Key Driver Analysis was also performed on the three different business groups and showed that ease of getting in touch was more important for Personal Tax and Business Tax customers than for Benefits and Credits customers. Getting things right the first time was more important for Personal Tax customers than for other customers. Acceptability of number of times they had to speak to an adviser was important for Benefits and Credits customers.
Ease of getting in touch
Most respondents only had to call once to get through to an adviser (69%) and the call waiting time was on average 4 minutes, although (35%) reported waiting less than 3 minutes and (35%) reported waiting more than 10 minutes.
Two-thirds (64%) said that it was very or fairly easy to get in touch with the helpline.
Looking at the results by business groups, customers who phoned Business Tax helplines waited less time on average to get through than others (a median time of 3 minutes).
First contact resolution
Just over two-thirds (69%) reported talking to an adviser once about their issue and a fifth (23%) said they had spoken to advisers two or three times.
Four-fifths (83%) said that the number of times they spoke to an adviser about the issue was acceptable. This score varied according to the number of times customers had spoken to an adviser, 69% of those who spoke to an adviser two or three times thought it was acceptable and 29% of those who spoke to an adviser four or more times thought it was acceptable.
Advisers
Customers were generally very positive towards advisers:
- 94% felt the adviser had treated them well
- 91% agreed that the adviser had understood their query
- 89% said it was easy to understand the information provided by the adviser
- 87% agreed that the adviser had sufficient expertise to deal with their query
- 85% said it was easy to understand what they had to do next to resolve their query
At the overall level, the results had not changed significantly compared with April 2012-March 2013.
The National Insurance and Child Benefit helplines scored higher than any other helpline in all of these areas and was typically found to outperform other Personal Tax or Tax Credits lines.
Advisers/Agents
Customers were generally very positive towards advisers:
- 94% felt the adviser had treated them well
- 91% agreed that the adviser had understood their query
- 89% said it was easy to understand the information provided by the adviser
- 87% agreed that the adviser had sufficient expertise to deal with their query
- 85% said it was easy to understand what they had to do next to resolve their query
At the overall level, the results had not changed significantly compared with April 2012-March 2013.
The National Insurance and Child Benefit helplines scored higher than any other helpline in all of these areas and was typically found to outperform other Personal Tax or Tax Credits lines.
Improvements
A third of customers felt that no improvements were needed (36%).
The most common suggestions respondents spontaneously gave for improvements were:
- Improve the time taken to get through to an adviser (32%)
- Have better trained / more knowledgeable staff (14%)
- Remove the automated messages at the start of calls (10%)
The KDA results reinforce the improvements spontaneously given by respondents. Ease of getting in touch was an area highlighted as needing improvement in the KDA and the top improvement given spontaneously was to improve the time taken to get through to a member of staff.
Similarly, getting things right the first time was an area which the KDA suggested should be focused on for improvements. This is likely to be related to the levels of training and knowledge of staff which was the improvement 14% of respondents spontaneously said they wanted to see.
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