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Call Centres - Why HMRC should steer clear

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17th Oct 2005
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Simon SweetmanBy Simon Sweetman

Yesterday I phoned a call centre. No, not HMRC, but a private sector organisation. I should have known better. I was routed from Ireland to India and dealt with somebody who did not understand my query. I was then routed to someone who did understand but who then fobbed me off. Nothing unexpected about that.

But it set me wondering why HMRC is moving inexorably to larger and larger call centres as its favoured way of dealing with what it calls customers.

For about the last twenty years (well, all right, since 1979) it has been evident for those in government that the private sector does it better. When I was in the Revenue they introduced performance related pay (after all, everybody in the private sector was doing it). When the unions suggested that it was unrealistic they were told they were luddites and opposing the necessary march of progress. It didn't work, but it cost lots of money especially in management time where everything had to be measured. So reducing the amount of post on your desk was good but dealing with it properly was irrelevant. Closing down a pointless enquiry was bad and hanging on for months for the last fiver was good. Eventually those lessons were learned.

For years, though, the public sector followed every new whim of the private sector (usually about the time the private sector had seen what was wrong with it and dumped it).

I doubt that the readers of this site will be entirely certain of the efficiency of the private sector if they deal with a particular large publishing organisation (which most of you probably do) which in my experience has never yet managed to get a single transaction right first time and very rarely manages to bill the correct amount (and that unwanted extra package of yellow books is still sitting in my hallway six weeks after the second time they said they'd send a courier to pick them up ' last time I returned something they sent me a label and I took it to the post office, but that didn't seem to be an option this time).

However (to return to the point), given that the call centre experience is so negative for the users, why do large organisations do it ?

One of the targets that HMRC has been set post merger is to look to provide a single point of contact for each of its customers. When you go out to those customers ' in my case to small business ' the reaction is very positive, but there is a fundamental difference between what customers want and what HMRC thinks it is going to provide. What they mean by a single point of contact is a telephone number or a website address from which the taxpayer can reach his or her records or look for information. What small business would like it to mean is something which used to exist: a real live person in an office who was responsible for your file as part of their allocation and who over time would get to know your business and the problems that were likely to arise.

It seems clear that this is simply not seen as a possibility. It would cost money and call centres and websites save money: electronic communications get cheaper and cheaper and real live people (especially trained real live people) get more expensive. But wait: at least one of the big banks is now claiming that it is bringing back the account manager, even a real live person that you can talk to. And that's in the private sector so it must be good.

Is absolute cheapness the best option for the public sector after all? Seeking the cheapest option gave us turkey twizzlers for school dinners and dirty hospitals. Surely what matters for the public sector in a democracy is giving the taxpayers the service that they want. We are not so stupid as to think that we won't have to pay for it, but the potential savings involved ' in money but also in time and temper - in getting things right are enormous.

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By mikewhit
17th Oct 2005 13:19

Waste of time & money
Why can't we have call centre numbers that just ring until there's someone to take your call, rather than having to stand around listening to mindless music, grilling your neurons if on a mobile, and wasting your time and money on a 0845/0870 number ?

BT at least has a ringback facility under which they phone you.

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By User deleted
18th Oct 2005 10:54

HMC service standards have already dropped
As Simon says, the current driver is quantity, not quality. The private sector has gradually learnt that de-skilling simly means that something which could previously be dealt with in one call, is now requiring half a dozen. So the cost effectiveness of the argument rapidly gets eroded.

At the Government level, my experiences with the Inland Revenue have given me the impression of staff who are keen to help, but haven't got the knowledge. However, the old Customs & Excise was a different kettle of fish. I used to be able to phone the local Droitwich office and the staff there were excellent. Polite, helpful and very knowlegeable. That facility has now gone and access is via a "regional call centre". The quality of service has dropped dramatically.

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By AnonymousUser
18th Oct 2005 16:08

Not just call centres, but face-to-face meetings cut.
Currently the ordinary taxpayer can walk into an HMRC 'enquiry office' and, after some waiting around, may actually speak to someone face to face about thier tax/ tax credit problems. This may be about to change with the new HMRC 'channel strategy' for dealing with customers. The new strategy is being piloted in several HMRC offices and it works like this:

1. Joe Public walks into the HMRC office but is approached by a "floor walker" who points him in the direction of a telephone to call the relevant helpline to answer his query. If the call centre chicken says Joe should see a real live HMRC person the chicken CAN NOT make an appointment for him.

2. Joe approaches the 'floor walker' agian for help. He is told he can make an appointment to see an HMRC but that appointment cannot be on the same day. It is not possible to ring up to make an appointment.

Outcome: Joe has to make two trips to the HMRC office to get to see a real person.
If HMRC were a bank we would all 'try another bank' as the adverts advise us to when we can't get an appointment to see the bank manager.

Rebecca Cave

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