.png)
.png)
Key points
- HMRC responded to questions about the campaign put by Tax Journal.
- Asking whether people would choose to use HMRC is clearly pointless.
- Service standards have fallen during the period that HMRC have been using the term ‘customer’.
- Encourage people to sign the petition.
When we launched the ‘I am not a customer’ campaign three weeks ago, I asked readers to sign a petition that had already been created on the Direct.gov website. At the time, it had only two signatures.
It’s now up to 700, so well done, but we’ll need to get more if it is to have any effect, so please invite your staff, clients, friends etc to sign (and if anyone knows the Stuart Herd who set up the petition, please do put him in touch with me).
This is one of those campaigns which is not only of interest to tax specialists; everyone can see how inappropriate it is to call taxpayers and claimants ‘customers’.
Everyone, that is, apart from HMRC. Our sister magazine, Tax Journal, put some questions about our campaign to them, and received some – how can I put this – ‘interesting’ replies. I’ve printed Tax Journal’s questions and HMRC’s replies in full below, but with my comments interspersed within them.
Mind your language
Tax Journal: ‘Does HMRC accept that use of the term ‘customer’ is not appropriate?’
HMRC: ‘Language is important.’
Well, it’s nice to start with something that we can agree on. Language is indeed important; that is why it is wrong to call people ‘customers’ when they are not choosing to buy a product or service from you.
HMRC: ‘We use the term “customer” to underpin our thinking about how we should relate to the millions of people we serve. The word “customer” invites a different provider orientation, with its implication of choice. We know that it is this that irritates our critics but it is exactly this point that needs to be thought about when defining how we connect with people. We must ask ourselves: “If this person had a choice would they come back to us?” If the answer is “no” then we need to address that. We do not want to be the kind of organisation that takes people for granted because we can.’
Where to start...? Perhaps with the complete contradiction between ‘We know that it is this that irritates our critics’ and ‘We do not want to be the kind of organisation that takes people for granted because we can’. What better illustration is there of taking people for granted than continuing, for more than a decade, to describe them in a way that they find irritating?
Then there are the implications of genuinely treating people as customers. Without repeating in detail what I said three weeks ago, these include giving top-class service to the people from whom you make the most money, while trying to cut costs and automate processes from more unprofitable customers.
That is a fair description of what has happened in HMRC recently, with the best service being enjoyed by large corporates and very high net worth individuals, and just shows how wrong it is to try and run a government service on the same basis as a department store.
But most ridiculous of all is ‘We must ask ourselves: “If this person had a choice would they come back to us?”’ Ridiculous, because it takes only a moment’s thought to realise that the answer to that question will always be ‘no’ unless a repayment is due.
Even if HMRC accurately prepopulated my entire tax return for me so that I only had to approve it online, and then arranged a payment plan which precisely fitted my personal circumstances, would I choose to pay my taxes next year if I could choose not to? Of course I wouldn’t, and I’m sure you wouldn’t either.
Quality of service
HMRC: 'We think it is inevitable that when you think of someone who comes to you through choice and has to be encouraged back through the quality of service they experience even when this is not literally the case this will feed through into the quality of service you provide.
'A customer has to be treated exceptionally well and that is what we aspire to. We want to think of the millions of people we serve as deserving of the same consideration and attention that those who use commercial services receive. So no the use of "customer" is not inappropriate.’
Trying to be as fair as I can, I can understand the sentiment behind this comment, and, if the theory had worked, it might be argued that it had some merit.
If the result of irritating us over the past ten years by calling us ‘customers’ had been that we now had a significantly increased standard of service, we would probably all grit our teeth and bear it.
As we all know, however, the reality is that service standards have fallen disastrously over that period.
In addition to the arguments I have already made about what treating people as ‘customers’ really entails, the other reason why this policy has been ineffective is probably that HMRC staff know that it is nonsense too.
It is just another of the buzzwords, dropped from on high in 100 Parliament Street, that have no relevance to the day-to-day work of the HMRC foot-soldiers on whom they land.
Tax Journal: ‘Does HMRC intend to continue to use the term?’
HMRC: ‘We do.’
So treating us ‘exceptionally well’, such that if we ‘had a choice’ we would gladly exercise it in favour of using HMRC, does not extend as far as listening to us saying that we don’t want to be called ‘customers’ when we aren’t.
We are to be treated as if we had a choice about which tax assessment and collection service we use, when actually HMRC cannot offer us any such choice; but we are not allowed to have a choice in how we are referred to by HMRC, when it would be entirely possible for HMRC to adapt their terminology to what their users want.
No, never and none
Tax Journal: ‘Are there any plans to stop using the term, and if so when will the change take place and what terms will be used instead?’
HMRC: ‘We think using the term "customer" underlines the fact that the people we serve are entitled to be treated as though they could receive the services they get from us elsewhere. It is right that we have the mind-set of an organisation faced with tough competition for the people we deliver our services to.’
The response is not, of course, an answer to the question; which would have been ‘no, never and none’. It does, however, highlight the number of times that HMRC used the word ‘we’ in their replies.
Despite saying that the point of the term is to be focused on what their users want, the answers show no real connection with users at all. I have never seen any suggestion that taxpayers and claimants asked to be called customers, or that any external body suggested that they should be.
There does not even seem to have been a survey or a focus group which came up with the term. It is, instead, a concept which appears to have come solely from within the higher reaches of HMRC.
It seems extraordinary that they insist on retaining it when there is no evidence that it has had any positive effect, and they acknowledge that it causes irritation.
As I said in the first article, despite the length of time that it has now been used, I have never yet heard any taxpayers or claimants refer to themselves as ‘customers’, nor have I ever heard any adviser use the term except as an ironical reference to HMRC’s use of it. Nor, as an editor, have I ever received an article from outside HMRC referring to taxpayers as ‘customers’.
Tax Journal: ‘Do you have any comment on Mike Truman’s article or the campaign?’
HMRC: ‘We always welcome robust debate. The views that Mike’s campaign will generate (and we think there will be many) will contribute to an interesting and important conversation – one to which we are likely to contribute. We know that not everyone likes our use of the term “customer” and we will certainly listen to the views of our critics but we believe the term plays an important part in helping us to take forward our strategy of putting people at the heart of everything we do.’
Well, so far there don’t appear to have been ‘many’ views. Almost unanimously, the response has been that ‘customer’ is the wrong word, and that the continued use of it is irritating.
We will be pleased to take a contribution from HMRC, and indeed have been pleased to publicise (and criticise) the response that they gave to Tax Journal.
I wonder, however, in what sense HMRC intend to ‘listen’ to the views of their critics? Given the uncompromising statement that they intend to go on referring to taxpayers and claimants as customers, does this mean that they are prepared to listen but not to act on what they hear?
I’m going to be optimistic and assume that it does not. Let’s work on the basis that they intend to listen, and that if they hear a resounding and overwhelming call for the term ‘customer’ to be dropped then they will act on it.
That makes it even more important to get as many signatures as possible to the petition, so I would repeat my request that you publicise it as widely as possible. That invitation also extends to our ‘brothers and sisters in tax’ within HMRC; you might be particularly pleased to know that the names of those who have signed the petition do not appear on the website...
Here at Taxation, we are looking at other ways of publicising this campaign and moving it forward, so watch this space over the coming months.
