Corporate report

HMRC monthly performance update: January 2018

Published 1 March 2018

These figures show how we’re performing against our main customer service objectives.

These objectives are all about:

• how we’re helping customers to do things online
• how quickly we answer your phone calls
• how quickly we handle your letters
• how we handle complaints

Our objectives are set by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and are published in our single departmental plan.

1. At a glance

Below is the full set of figures for our customer service contact volumes, and performance against our customer service objectives.

1.1 Contact volumes

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

	January 2018	Change from December 2017	Year-to-date (since April 2017)
Personal tax account new users	0.5m	+ 0.3m	14.4m [1]
Calls received	4,762,727	+ 2,065,470	40,041,880
Post received [2]	1,265,827	+ 80,265	15,295,753
i-forms received	110,379	+ 31,715	1,043,134
New complaints received [3]	6,873	+ 1,802	64,834

Notes

1. Total users measured from the launch of the personal tax account in December 2015.
2. Post may not always get categorised on our live system in-month and the numbers can therefore change in subsequent months. The current month will be subject to greatest revision.
3. Complaints may not always get logged on our live system in-month and the numbers can therefore increase in subsequent months. The current month will be subject to greatest revision.
4. Numbers may appear not to sum due to rounding.

1.2 Performance

	January 2018	Change from December 2017	Year-to-date (since April 2017)	Target
Average speed of answering a customer call	04.20	+ 00:23	04:31	05:00 mins
Call wait outliers	14.0%	+ 2.6%	14.8%	No more than 15% wait more than 10 mins
% of post handled within 15 days [1]	85.5%	+ 3.0%	78.9%	80%
% of post handled within 40 days [2]	97.9%	+ 0.2%	96.7%	95%
Customer satisfaction with digital services	81.2%	+ 1.6%	80.1%	80%
i-forms responded to within 7 days	96.2%	+ 3.8%	92.8%	95%

Notes

1. Post turnaround is based on post where customers are expecting a response.
2. To enable 40 days to pass, this data is lagged by one month.

The in-year figures reported are initial management information to provide an indication of our performance. They are subject to revision and audit. Final full-year performance figures will be made available in our annual report and accounts.

2. Customer satisfaction with digital services

2.1 Customer satisfaction

We want to achieve an average of 80% customer satisfaction with our digital services across the year.

During January 2018, the percentage of customers that were either ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with our digital services was:

81.2%

3. Phones

We aim to achieve a consistent level of service across our phone helplines.

We aim to:

• answer customer calls to our helplines within an average speed of answer of 5 minutes across the year
• achieve no more than 15% of customer calls waiting more than 10 minutes

We received 4.8 million calls in January 2018.

3.1 Average speed of answering a call

During January 2018 we answered our phones in an average of:

04 mins 20 seconds

3.2 Call waiting outliers

During January 2018 the percentage of customer calls that waited more than 10 minutes before the call was answered was:

14.0%

3.3 Phone calls handled

During January 2018 we handled on average:

86.5% of our calls

4. Post

We received almost one million targeted post items in January 2018.

We aim to turn around at least 80% of post and complaints within 15 working days across the year.

During January 2018 we turned around:

85.5% of customer post within 15 days

During January 2018 we turned around:

86.9% of post and i-form correspondence within 15 days

5. Complaints

We want to get all our interactions with customers right first time. We deal with 45 million individuals and more than 5.4 million businesses. Each year we receive more than 50 million phone calls and 12 million letters.

If a customer is unhappy with our service, we aim to resolve a customer’s complaint quickly and fairly.

You can read more detailed guidance on how we handle and resolve complaints.

Definitions:

• A ‘Tier 1 complaint’ is when a customer complains and we aim to resolve their case at this stage
• A ‘Tier 2 complaint’ is when the customer is dissatisfied with our decision on their initial complaint (Tier 1) and they have asked us to look at their concerns again
• ‘Fully upheld’ means we agree with the key part of the customer’s complaint
• ‘Partially upheld’ means we agree with some, but not all, of the customer’s complaint
• ‘Not upheld’ means we don’t agree with the customer’s complaint

5.1 Tier 1 complaints

We received 6,873 Tier 1 complaints in January 2018.

Note: complaints may not always get logged on our live system in-month and the numbers can therefore increase in subsequent months. The current month will be subject to greatest revision.

Tier 1 complaints cleared

	Apr 2017	May 2017	Jun 2017	Jul 2017	Aug 2017	Sep 2017	Oct 2017	Nov 2017	Dec 2017	Jan 2018	Feb 2018	Mar 2018
Tier 1 complaints not upheld	47%	46%	46%	47%	48%	48%	47%	48%	48%	45%
Tier 1 complaints partially upheld	14%	14%	17%	15%	14%	13%	13%	14%	13%	13%
Tier 1 complaints fully upheld	39%	39%	37%	38%	39%	38%	40%	38%	39%	42%

Note: due to rounding, these figures may not add up to 100%.

5.2 Tier 2 complaints

We received 403 Tier 2 complaints in January 2018.

Note: complaints may not always get logged on our live system in-month and the numbers can therefore increase in subsequent months. The current month will be subject to greatest revision.

Tier 2 complaints cleared

	Apr 2017	May 2017	Jun 2017	Jul 2017	Aug 2017	Sep 2017	Oct 2017	Nov 2017	Dec 2017	Jan 2018	Feb 2018	Mar 2018
Tier 2 complaints not upheld	48%	60%	55%	57%	56%	59%	65%	60%	65%	60%
Tier 2 complaints partially upheld	29%	21%	23%	23%	26%	19%	20%	22%	19%	17%
Tier 2 complaints fully upheld	23%	19%	22%	20%	18%	22%	15%	18%	16%	22%

Note: due to rounding, these figures may not add up to 100%.