Wednesday 22 December 2010

HMRC's Secret Survey


My thanks to a loyal reader who dropped me a summery of the Face to Face Customer Survey Satisfaction Results April to November 2010:

-98% of customers are satisfied with the service they received.
-98% of customers were happy with the time between requesting and receiving an appointment.
-99% of customers felt they were dealt with in a professional way.
-97% found the EC environment friendly
-99% felt they were treated as individuals by staff.
-73% of interviews were tax, 17% Tax Credits, 10% Other HMRC
-54% of customers tried to get information from other HMRC options before their appointment (48% tried phone, 6% wrote and 7% website)

As you can see, they are very good indeed.

Yet HMRC have not publicised these either externally or internally.

For why?

HMRC's "strategy" is to move away from face to face encounters with "customers", survey results that show they do this very well are not at all welcome. Indeed Richard James, Head of Face to Face operations, is looking for ways to increase the 54% of respondees who used other HMRC options first.

Tax does have to be taxing.

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13 comments:

  1. It just goes to show it is harder to fob people off face to face.

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  2. Or that the way the tax office used to work was quite good. What is left of the IREC service is the last vestige of what used to be a professional and efficient service.

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  3. Anon 21.36 is absolutely right. I used to work for Inland Revenue/Hmrc but never in "taxes". I used to get a lot of people asking me questions about tax which I could not answer. My advice was - that if they needed help go to an enquiry office and ask. You will get fair, clear, impartial advice. They will only want you to pay tax that is due - not to maximise what they can get off you.
    I was proud to say that I received totally positive feedback - enquiry centre staff were the best and knew their stuff. Where are they now? Stuck in a call centre with scripts and targets. Let them get back to doing their jobs.

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  4. We are not stuck in contact centres there's still 276 enquiry centres with staff working hard to help customers.

    Which is difficult when all senior management of F2F is desperately trying to stop people coming in.

    Will be interesting when the remodel for 2012/13 is announced in next month or so.

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  5. 276 enquiry centres. And how many of them are part time or due to close? And none of them can deal with people just coming in - they have to go through a CC 1st.

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  6. Anonymous 23.11

    Not strictly correct. We can deal with people without them coming through a contact centre first. I work in a large Enquiry Centre-we can offer an appointment if someone asks for it. If I think their query's going to be quick and can be answered over the phone I'll offer them that option but if they want an appointment they can have one. This month's been the first time we've been quiet all year and have immediate availability for appointments.

    My bone of contention is the need to ask for physical ID which we're led to believe is being addressed to bring us more into line with the level of security asked in phone queries. Tax Credit appointments can be seen without the need for physical ID however. It's an illogical 2 tier system which was acknowledged in a hotseat question I asked last year.

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  7. Anonymous 00.56

    Be careful giving away info that could be used to identify you.

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  8. "Be careful giving away info that could be used to identify you."

    You would not want to be on the list for the chop and end up working somewhere else now would you?

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  9. Being sacked from "a job for life" where "they are all lazy and incompetent" for gross misconduct might make getting a job somewhere else more difficult.

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  10. "Being sacked from "a job for life" where "they are all lazy and incompetent" for gross misconduct might make getting a job somewhere else more difficult."

    I agree. Having HMRC on your CV wouldn't exactly be conducive to getting employment elsewhere.

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  11. I agree with the sentiments, however one of the reasons HMRC have to reduce EC presence is because they have to find "Efficiencies" - Taxpayers want the service but not the price tag

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  12. "Taxpayers want the service but not the price tag"

    The trouble is that the taxpayers are not getting the service but are still footing a large bill to cover HMRC cock ups.

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  13. Just for the record this has been published internally and very prominently on the CCD Intranet site.

    I believe it was also sent as a link via email to all F2F staff with a 'well done' etc attached.

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