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Revenue and Customs: Telephone Services

Answer

The information requested, where available, is provided in the following table.

	2007-08	2008-09	April 2009 to February 2010
Average time for a call to be answered (mm:ss)¹	01:26	01:57	01:29
Average time spent waiting in a call queue¹	As above	As above	As above
Average call duration (mm:ss)²	05:27	05:59	06:31
Number of unanswered calls (Million)³	24.5	43.7	16.4
¹ Defined as the time taken for a call to be answered by an adviser once a customer has selected an option from the call steering menu.
² This includes the time the customer speaks to an adviser and any follow-up actions the adviser may need to take (e.g. updating customer's records).
³ Defined as the difference between the call attempts made to HMRC's telephone helplines and the call attempts answered by advisers, less calls answered with an automated message.

In July 2009 HM Revenue and Customs introduced a range of automated information messages on its helplines whose purpose includes enabling customers to gain the information they need without speaking to an adviser. From April 2009 to February 2010, five million calls had been handled in this way, helping to reduce the 'unanswered calls' to 16.4 million.HMRC's systems do not capture information on return calls.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

508 c1307W; 325152

Session

2009-10

Subjects

Telephone services Revenue and Customs

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk