HMRC 2014-15 half-yearly performance

20 November 2014

HMRC have issued a briefing explaining their performance in the first half of this financial year.

The briefing reports some notable successes and challenges during the period, such as tax credits renewals and introducing new digital ways of working.

The section of the report covering customer helplines may be of particular interest to the payroll community. This shows that HMRC increased the number of calls handled by 1.8% compared to the same point last year, to 74.5%. This is compared to just 48% of calls in 2010-2011.

Customers are also reported to have benefited from better self-service options on the phone, with the introduction of voice recognition through Intelligent Telephone Automation (ITA), which drew mostly positive feedback from customers. Customers get the information they need automatically, or are routed to an adviser able to deal with their specific enquiry. So far this year the ITA service has handled 7.4 million calls.