Corporate report

HMRC monthly performance report: October 2023

Published 7 December 2023

These figures show our main customer service performance indicators for 2023 to 2024, 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 our customer service performance measures. They reflect HMRC’s strategic objectives that are designed to improve our resilience, effectiveness and support for taxpayers.

This year we have added further customer service measures to provide more information on the overall customer experience. As a result, the accompanying data table has been re-designed to include these changes, which are:

• customer satisfaction and Net Easy – we now also include disaggregated results of customer experience surveys for phone, webchat and digital channels

• number of calls received – this section now includes a breakdown of the number of calls handled by automated systems, the number of calls handled by an adviser and the number of calls not handled

Definitions of the new measures can be found in the ‘Definitions’ tab in the accompanying data table.

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.

	Current month	Year-to-date since April 2023	Year-to-date 2022-2023 (for same period)
Webchats	85,707	664,773	280,013
Calls received	2,947,767	22,005,817	21,678,642
Correspondence, of which:	1,563,029	12,441,924	13,158,242
iForms received	212,703	1,797,575	1,665,116
Post received [1]	1,350,326	10,644,349	11,493,126

1.2 Performance

	Current month	Year-to-date since April 2023
Customer satisfaction with phone, webchat and digital services (%)	77.9%	78.4%
Net Easy – phone, webchat and digital services	57.0	58.9
Webchat adviser attempts handled (%)	96.1%	95.1%
Telephony adviser attempts handled (%)	69.5%	66.6%
Customer correspondence (iForms and post) cleared within 15 days of receipt (%) [1]	75.0%	74.1%
Customer correspondence (iForms and post) cleared within 40 days of receipt (%) [1] [2]	87.4%	86.0%
Once and Done (%) - phone, webchat and digital services (%)	83.0%	83.1%

Notes

1. Post is not always categorised on our live system immediately, meaning that numbers may be revised in subsequent monthly reports.

2. Data is lagged by a month.

The 2023 to 2024 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:

77.9%

This graph shows our in-month and year-to-date phone, webchat and digital customer satisfaction in 2023 to 2024. HMRC aims to achieve 80% customer satisfaction. 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
Monthly	76.4	78.3	79.7	80.3	77.7	78.0	77.9
Year-to-date	76.4	77.2	78.1	78.7	78.5	78.5	78.4

3. Net Easy – phone, webchat and digital services

Our Net Easy score this month was:

57.0

This figure represents the percentage of positive responses minus the percentage 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 minus 100 (all negative responses). HMRC aims to achieve 70.0 Net Easy.

This graph shows our in-month and year-to-date Net Easy score in 2023 to 2024; 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
Monthly	55.2	58.7	61.4	62.1	58.2	58.6	57.0
Year-to-date	55.2	56.8	58.4	59.4	59.2	59.1	58.9

4. Webchat

We received more than 85,000 webchats. The proportion we handled was:

96.1%

This graph shows our in-month and year-to-date number of adviser attempts handled in 2023 to 2024 – the data used to create this graph is available in a table after this image.

Webchats handled (%)

	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct
Monthly	92.0	93.8	94.4	95.2	95.9	96.5	96.1
Year-to-date	92.0	93.0	93.7	94.3	94.7	95.0	95.1

5. Phones

We received more than 2.9 million calls this month, and around 1.9 million callers requested to speak to an adviser, of which we answered:

69.5%

This graph shows our in-month and year-to-date number of adviser attempts handled in 2023 to 2024. HMRC aims to handle 85% of telephony adviser attempts.

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
Monthly	53.7	67.3	70.6	69.5	68.5	70.0	69.5
Year-to-date	53.7	60.2	63.4	64.8	65.4	66.1	66.6

6a. Correspondence cleared in 15 working days

We received around 1.5 million iForms and items of post, of which around 1.3 million required a response. The proportion we turned around within 15 days was:

75.0%

This graph shows the in-month and year-to-date percentage of correspondence turned around within 15 working days in 2023 to 2024. HMRC aims to achieve 80% of correspondence turned around within 15 working days.

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
Monthly	71.4	75.4	75.3	74.0	71.8	75.4	75.0
Year-to-date	71.4	73.4	74.1	74.1	73.7	74.0	74.1

6b. Correspondence cleared in 40 working days

The proportion we turned around within 40 days was:

87.4%

This graph shows the in-month and year-to-date percentage of correspondence turned around within 40 working days in 2023 to 2024. HMRC aims to achieve 95% of correspondence turned around within 40 working days.

The data used to create this graph is available in a table after this image.

Correspondence turned around within 40 working days (%)

	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep
Monthly	86.8	88.9	85.7	83.3	82.8	87.4
Year-to-date	86.8	88.3	87.4	86.4	85.7	86.0

7. Once and Done

A Yes/No question asking whether the customer was able to achieve what they needed to today. The Once and Done score represents the percentage who responded ‘Yes’. The possible scores range from 0 to 100%.

83.0%

This graph shows the in-month and year-to-date percentage who responded ‘Yes’ in 2023 to 2024 – the data used to create this graph is available in a table after this image.

Once and Done – Positive Responses (%)

	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct
Monthly	80.6	82.8	84.0	85.3	82.8	83.3	83.0
Year-to-date	80.6	81.6	82.4	83.2	83.1	83.1	83.1