Corporate report

HMRC monthly performance update: August 2021

Published 7 October 2021

These figures show our main customer service performance indicators for 2021 to 2022, which are about:

• how satisfied our customers are with our services
• how we’re helping our online customers
• how many phone calls we answer
• how quickly we handle their correspondence

1. At a glance

These are the figures for our customer service contact volumes and performance of our new customer service performance measures. They reflect HMRC’s new strategic objectives that are designed to improve our resilience, effectiveness and support for taxpayers. More information on these can be found in HMRC’s 2021 to 2022 Outcome Delivery Plan.

In line with our new strategic objectives, we have also updated our performance framework, with a set of revised customer service measures that will provide a fuller picture of the overall customer experience. As a result, the 2021 to 2022 monthly performance publication has been re-designed to include these changes, which are:

• customer satisfaction and Net Easy - these measures show the results of customer experience surveys. For 2021 to 2022 this includes telephony services as well as webchat and digital
• webchat adviser attempts handled – reports the proportion of customers engaging digitally with an adviser out of those that wanted to
• telephony adviser attempts handled – this tells us the percentage of customers who get to speak to an adviser out of those who wanted to speak to one. It does not include calls handled by our automated system
• customer correspondence cleared within 15 days of receipt – for 2021 to 2022 this measure will include iForms as well as post. These have been reported separately in previous years

Where the measures have changed in 2021 to 2022 the historical data is still available in the accompanying data table but will not be updated from this year. Definitions of the new measures can be found in the analytical annex in the data tables.

Contact volumes

Note: demand for our customer services may vary significantly between months due to the seasonal nature of revenue and customs administration.

	Current month	Year-to-date since April 2021	Compared to year-to-date 2020-21
Webchats [1]	152,445	813,145
Calls received [2]	2,751,563	15,175,404	13,512,971
Correspondence, of which:	1,327,723	8,575,695	7,777,653
iForms received	167,679	1,032,213	1,094,647
Post received [3]	1,160,044	7,543,482	6,683,006

Notes

1. Webchat is a new measure for 2021 to 2022 so no comparative data is available for 2020 to 2021.
2. Historically we have been reporting against customer facing telephone numbers (such as tax credits, PAYE and Self Assessment). From 2021 to 2022, to enable HMRC to provide a complete picture of our telephony performance, we now include all HMRC helplines.
3. Post is not always categorised on our live system immediately, meaning that numbers may be revised in subsequent monthly reports.

1.2 Performance

	Current month	Year-to-date since April 2021
Customer satisfaction with phone, webchat and digital services (%)	84.3%	83.3%
Net Easy – phone, webchat and digital services	71.2	68.2
Webchats adviser attempts handled (%)	92.2%	92.2%
Telephony adviser attempts handled (%)	81.2%	76.8%
Customer correspondence (iForms and post) cleared within 15 days of receipt (%) [1]	48.4%	39.1%

The 2021 to 2022 figures are subject to revision and audit. Final full-year performance figures will be published in our annual report and accounts.

2. Customer satisfaction with phone, webchat and digital services

The percentage of customers who were either ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with our phone, webchat and digital services was:

84.3%

This graph shows our in-month and year-to-date phone, webchat and digital customer satisfaction in 2021 to 2022 - the data used to create this graph is available in a table after this image.

Customers ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with our phone, webchat and digital services (%)

	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar
Monthly	84.0	82.4	83.3	82.2	84.3
Year-to-date	84.0	83.4	83.4	83.1	83.3

3. Net Easy – phone, webchat and digital services

Our Net Easy score for the month was:

71.2

This figure represents the total of positive responses minus the total of negative responses to our customer surveys. Customers were asked ‘how easy was it to deal with us today?’ A positive response is those who said ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’. A negative response is those who said ‘hard’ or ‘very hard’. The measure is an index that ranges from 100 (all positive responses) to ‘-100’ (all negative responses).

This graph shows our in-month and year-to-date Net Easy score in 2021 to 2022 - the data used to create this graph is available in a table after this image.

Net Easy of phone, webchat and digital channels

	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar
Monthly	69.6	66.3	67.8	65.2	71.2
Year-to-date	69.6	68.3	68.2	67.6	68.2

4. Webchat

We received more than 152,000 webchats. The proportion handled was:

92.2%

This graph shows our in-month and year-to-date number of adviser attempts handled in 2021 to 2022 - the data used to create this graph is available in a table after this image.

Webchat adviser attempts handled (%)

	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar
Monthly	92.2	92.5	91.7	92.4	92.2
Year-to-date	92.2	92.3	92.1	92.2	92.2

5. Phones

We aim for a consistent service across our phone helplines. We received more than 2.7 million calls this month; more than 2 million callers requested to speak to an adviser, of which we answered:

81.2%

This graph shows our in-month and year-to-date number of adviser attempts handled in 2021 to 2022 - the data used to create this graph is available in a table after this image.

Telephony adviser attempts handled (%)

	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar
Monthly	66.2	72.8	85.5	80.5	81.2
Year to date	66.2	69.3	74.3	75.8	76.8

6. Correspondence

We received almost 1.1 million iForms and items of post for which customers required a response. The proportion we turned around in 15 days was:

48.4%

This graph shows the in-month and year-to-date percentage of correspondence turned around within 15 working days in 2021 to 2022 - the data used to create this graph is available in a table after this image.

Correspondence turned around within 15 working days (%)

	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar
Monthly	35.4	32.6	38.9	43.3	48.4
Year-to-date	35.4	34.2	35.5	37.3	39.1