Taxman keeps 16 million people hanging on the telephone

15:10, 29 January 2013

LONDON. January 29. KAZINFORM The UK's revenue authorities have been accused of failing to get to grips with its customer service arrangements, which leave around 16 million people and businesses facing the prospect of hanging on the line for more than five minutes when trying to get through.

MPs attacked HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC ) for its "low ambitions" after revealing that it expects about 20% of the 80m calls to their hotlines - many of which are 0845 numbers - to take longer than five minutes to answer.

After HMRC was condemned last year for costing callers £136m a year through delays in answering calls, chief executive Lin Homer told the public accounts committee (PAC) on Monday that the cost was made up of the time people lost on the phone to the service and the cost of the call charge, which accounted for about £34m of the total, The Guardian informs.

"We think if we increase the number of calls handled to the 90% we've held in the last quarter of this year, that will about halve the time of the call," she said. Homer said that would mean the four minutes 42 second average waiting time would drop to about two minutes but admitted those timings did not include how long customers had spent dealing with interactive voice recognition systems.

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