{"id":26770,"date":"2024-06-20T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-20T10:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smh.group\/?p=26770"},"modified":"2024-09-25T12:59:18","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T11:59:18","slug":"the-ongoing-issues-with-hmrcs-customer-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devstagesite.co.uk\/smhgroup\/the-ongoing-issues-with-hmrcs-customer-service\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ongoing Issues with HMRC’s Customer Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

A report from the National Audit Office (NAO) highlights serious problems with HMRC customer service.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A common tactic for grabbing a headline, be it a politician or organisation, is to take a relatively modest number and then multiply it by the large population to whom it applies. The National Audit Office<\/a> (NAO), the UK\u2019s independent public spending watchdog, adopted this approach for a press release on its HMRC customer service report.<\/p>\n

The \u2018798 years on hold\u2019 is the product of multiplying the average call waiting time in 2022\/23 by the number of calls that were answered by an HMRC adviser (20.5 million out of the 38 million made \u2013 53%). According to the NAO, waiting times rose in the first eleven months of 2023\/24 to an average of nearly 23 minutes and the proportion of calls that reached an adviser dropped to just 45%. In 2018\/19, the average wait was five minutes.<\/p>\n

HMRC faces a variety of problems in its efforts to improve customer service:<\/p>\n