Tackling HMRC’s customer service challenge

On 11 December CIOT and ICAEW launched a joint report addressing HMRC’s customer service challenge setting out ten key recommendations for improvement (tinyurl.com/cioticaewreportdec). The overarching aim was for this project to be constructive – to use our up-to-date findings to inform recommendations that could make meaningful improvements to HMRC customer service that would have mutual benefit for HMRC taxpayers and agents.

Our joint six-week study from 9 September to 18 October involved 31 agent firms recording contact attempts across HMRC phonelines and webchats followed by two workshops. This included sole practitioner firms through to the big four.

Participants recorded information such as waiting times duration of call whether their query was resolved and their overall satisfaction with HMRC services.

There were 634 contact attempts recorded during the six-week study with 530 connected to an HMRC adviser. Only 79...