Corporate report

HMRC monthly performance update: September 2017

Published 26 October 2017

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.

	September 2017	Change from August 2017	Year-to-date (since April 2017)
Personal tax account new users	0.4m	-0.3m	13m [1]
Calls received	4,252,604	369,661	25,376,934
Post received [2]	1,594,082	131,486	9,906,944
i-forms received	112,927	20,638	686,687
New complaints received [3]	7,106	- 32	38,529

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.

1.2 Performance

	September 2017	Change from August 2017	Year-to-date (since April 2017)	Target
Average speed of answering a customer call	05:35	+00:09	04:37	05:00 mins
Call wait outliers	20.9%	6.2%	15.6%	No more than 15% wait more than 10 mins
% of post handled within 15 days [1]	82.1%	- 3.5%	73.8%	80%
% of post handled within 40 days [2]	95.8%	- 0.1%	96.5%	95%
Customer satisfaction with digital services	77.6%	- 4%	80.5%	80%
i-forms responded to within 7 days	95.2%	+ 9.7%	91.5%	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 September 2017, the percentage of customers that were either ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with our digital services was:

77.6%

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 4.3 million telephone calls in September 2017.

3.1 Average speed of answering a call

During September 2017 we answered our phones in an average of:

5 mins 35 seconds

3.2 Call waiting outliers

During September 2017 the percentage of customer calls that waited more than 10 minutes before the call was answered was:

20.9%

3.3 Phone calls handled

During September 2017 we handled on average:

84.3% of our calls

4. Post

We received 1.1 million targeted post items in September 2017.

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

During September 2017 we turned around:

82.1% of customer post within 15 days

During September 2017 we turned around:

83.5% 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.

There’s 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 7,106 Tier 1 complaints in September 2017.

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%
Tier 1 complaints partially upheld	14%	14%	17%	15%	13%	13%
Tier 1 complaints fully upheld	39%	39%	37%	38%	39%	38%

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

5.2 Tier 2 complaints

We received 401 Tier 2 complaints in September 2017.

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%	56%	58%	57%	59%
Tier 2 complaints partially upheld	29%	21%	22%	23%	26%	18%
Tier 2 complaints fully upheld	23%	19%	22%	19%	18%	22%

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