Summary
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As the impact of COVID-19 continues to be felt by our customers, we remain focused on keeping the tax system running, while supporting the economy and protecting livelihoods
- We have seen considerable improvements in our customer service levels in the first quarter of 2021 to 2022:
- the percentage of calls answered has risen consistently and by the end of June was at the highest level for more than a year, with average call wait times reducing more than half by June when compared to April
- overall customer satisfaction remains strong at 83%
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We know there is further to go, and we may see continued fluctuation in service levels during a period of continuing uncertainty
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The improvement has been driven by our ability to rebalance how we deploy our staff, as the economy gradually emerges from the pandemic, and following recent reforms to staff contracts, which help improve the efficiency and flexibility of our operations
- The amount of outstanding tax debt has continued to reduce as we have supported customers to pay where they can, including through affordable instalment plans
During 2020 to 2021, HMRC stepped up to respond to urgent government priorities during unprecedented circumstances. It meant prioritising our resources to ensure that our core services kept running during the pandemic, while at the same time delivering vital COVID-19 support to millions of customers - including the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme.
In the first three months of the new financial year, our customer service performance has made good progress across most key measures. As the UK slowly emerges from the pandemic, we are also working towards a return over time to more normal levels of compliance activity, while recognising the very real needs and challenges that businesses and individuals still face.
We are contacting customers who have fallen behind with their tax during this difficult time. At all times, we will take an understanding and supportive approach to dealing with those who have tax debts or are concerned about their ability to pay their tax.
Customer experience
Throughout 2020 to 2021, we were proud to keep the tax system running while delivering new COVID-19 support schemes and supporting customers who were impacted by the pandemic. During this time, we saw record high average customer satisfaction with our digital services of 85.2%. We also introduced a range of new digital services, like digital stamps to avoid paper handling and a virtual assistant to handle routine Self Assessment and tax credits queries, and we increased our webchat capability, handling more than 3 million chats.
We took the conscious choice to divert 5,000 skilled customer service advisers to providing COVID-19 support because that is what individuals and small businesses needed from us most urgently. Our COVID-19 helpline handled 2.5 million calls during 2020 to 2021, with a wait time of just 1 minute and 16 seconds by the end of quarter 4.
At the same time, we expanded the capacity of our customs and international trade helpline as the UK left the EU, allowing us to answer calls with an average answering time of less than 5 seconds by the end of March 2021.
But these necessary measures had an impact on waiting times across some of our other helplines, and we're sorry about the inconvenience this caused to people at busy times.
In the first quarter of the new financial year, we have seen progress and improvement across most of our key customer experience measures. We have also extended the range of measures we use in order to reflect a fuller picture of the experience of our customers across
