HMRC phone wait times over 12 minutes
The average wait time on HMRC phone lines has improved in the last year with a two minute reduction to 12 minutes and 35 seconds
The latest HMRC performance report indicates that calls are being answered more quickly than a year ago, down from an average 14 minutes and 41 seconds. This is set against a background of increasing call numbers with monthly volumes rising from 2.66m to 2.68m in February 2022.
However, more than half of taxpayers are waiting more than 10 minutes for calls to be answered, with 51% of people held on the line for over 10 minutes. This compared with 47% at the same time last year.
HMRC reported that it handled 77% of calls to its phone lines with advisers handling queries, while the remainder were directed to web services as they did not want to speak an agent specifically. This was down from 85% in December, although monthly performance tends to fluctuate between 77% and 85% regardless of the reporting time with the self assessment season seeing a drop to 72% of calls completed.
Despite the long waits, 81% of customers were satisfied with the outcome of their conversations with HMRC agents, a figure more or less unchanged from 82% satisfaction levels the previous year.
Use of webchat has also increased to more than 40,000 interactions, despite HMRC reducing the service over the last few months to move staff to deal with the post backlog from the pandemic.
Story wrote by Sara White.