Annual report - 2004 - Part 3

Making it easy to comply from the 2004 Annual Report - 1

Most taxpayers and social assistance customers' attitude to compliance is that they are willing to do the right thing. By Inland Revenue making it easy for taxpayers to meet their obligations and receive their entitlements we are more likely to achieve higher levels of compliance. Creating an environment conducive to compliance also builds the community's confidence in Inland Revenue.

Nearly everyone in the community is an Inland Revenue customer, for various reasons: they operate businesses, earn salary and wages, make student loan repayments, or are entitled to family assistance or child support. Therefore we already have a large customer base, but it is also growing fast.

To meet our customers' expectations we need to understand their needs and the nature of the changes to our customer base. For example, there is a high rate of turnover in the GST taxpayer base, with over 72,000 taxpayers registering for GST and over 36,000 deregistering in the past year. New customers and customers changing their circumstances can require a greater level of contact and resources than customers whose circumstances are stable.

Some of this turnover is caused by:

• business life-cycles - for example, businesses may start or end, change their tax status, or change their employment status
• economic growth
• migration
• expected growth and turnover, for example in the student loan scheme where borrowers either start or finish repaying their loans.

To manage our taxpayers and other customers we need to be able to:

• respond to current demand, while planning for projected future demand
• provide more online and self-help services to customers
• continue to improve our processes to make compliance easier for our customers.

To respond to current demand, in addition to the services offered on our websites in 2003-04, we handled:

• 4.888 ¹¹ million phone contacts, plus 1.878 million calls to INFOexpress, our automated phone service
• 1.647 million correspondence contacts, including 177,293 electronic contacts
• 176,623 personal appointments at our offices on tax, family assistance and student loan matters
• 933,316 child support contacts.

^{11 This figure is not directly comparable with last year's figure as we have established that the reporting of our customer contact telephone volumes in the Information Services Output Class has been over-reported previously by approximately 3.6% due to the way a programme has interpreted information from another database.}

To make it easier for people to request information we successfully introduced natural language speech recognition technology into our INFOexpress self-service phone line. This lets callers request information with their voice, rather than having to use the touch tone keypad on their telephone. Since the service started in late February 2004, there has been a substantial increase in the number of successfully completed requests for stationery, compared to the previous touch tone service.

TUANZ Call Centre Team Leader of the Year

Bernadette (Bernie) Miller, Team Leader at Christchurch Call Centre, was awarded the Team Leader of the Year award at the TUANZ (Telecommunications Users' Association of New Zealand) Contact Centre Awards in June 2004.

Maire Murray, Team Leader from the Wellington Call Centre was also a finalist.

^{Bernadette (Bernie) Miller}

The TUANZ awards recognise excellence and exceptional achievement within New Zealand contact centres. They are the industry's opportunity to acknowledge individuals and contact centres who have made a significant contribution to their organisations and in doing so, have added to the professionalism of New Zealand contact centres.

"Bernie's award highlights the capability and professionalism of staff within Inland Revenue's call centres", says Geoffrey Frost, National Manager Call Management.

"We had two team leaders nominated for this award - the only organisation to have more than one staff member nominated for this award category. This reflects the high capability of people within our call centres."

"I was thrilled to be nominated and really proud to take the award. It's great to represent an organisation that is first-rate in its call centre technology and customer service," says Bernie.

"I really appreciate Inland Revenue's commitment to leadership development and providing opportunities to staff who want to expand on their existing skills."

Quality of our service

We regularly survey our large and dynamic customer base to measure how well we are delivering our services. Our customer satisfaction level was 86% for the year ending June 2004. The results from our call centres were higher again, with 87% overall satisfaction, and 96% of tax agents satisfied with their call centre service. An additional measure of the quality of our service is that 90.5% of surveyed customers had their enquiry answered in one call to an Inland Revenue call centre.

^{12 Margin of error ± 2%}

Child Support services are provided by a specific group within Inland Revenue. It is more challenging to achieve high customer satisfaction ratings with these customers because we are dealing with very emotional issues, often when people are under pressure as a result of a relationship breakdown. This year, 68% of our Child Support customers have been satisfied or very satisfied with the service received, a 2% increase on 2002-03.

Complete, correct, clear and timely responses

We measure the quality of our services by looking at the correctness, clarity, completeness and timeliness of a sample of our responses.

This year, our target was to improve our Child Support results by 5% on last year (from 76.1% to 80%). Our performance increased by 15%, with 87.6% of responses meeting our standards. This increase built on the improvement measures put in place in 2002-03, where we placed emphasis on improving technical advice and resources.

Our target for our tax, family assistance and student loan responses was to improve by 1% on last year's result of 82%. However, our results declined, with 77.5% of responses meeting all of the correctness, clarity, completeness and timeliness standards. The correctness and clarity of our responses to our customers remained at a similar level to last year, but there was a decline in the completeness of our written responses. This does not necessarily mean that customers received an incorrect or incomplete response as our standards refer to not just the answer to the customer, but also to the completeness of our record keeping. During the year we undertook training to raise performance. The training has resulted in 85% of surveyed work meeting the completeness standard at the end of the year.

Consistently satisfied customers Wellington Customer Service Representative Dion Scott The majority of our customers receive service through our five call centres, and their efficient and effective operation is vital for ensuring customer satisfaction remains high. Our Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) are on the front line of service delivery. The efficiency and professionalism of our CSRs is often what our customers remember about their experiences with Inland Revenue. CSR Dion Scott says working in the call centres is always challenging. "Helping taxpayers work through any problems they may have and reaching a solution is a great feeling, and giving them information to help their compliance is really rewarding. "Getting positive feedback from happy customers is fantastic and it makes dealing with the challenges of the role worthwhile." Feedback from the year included numerous examples such as: "Every time I ring the tax department I find it a pleasure to deal with you because you are so helpful. People always complain and run you down, but I have always found it a pleasure."

Other pages in: Annual report - 2004 - Part 3

• Our compliance model from the 2004 Annual Report
• Making it easy to comply from the 2004 Annual Report - 2
• Tailored services meeting needs from the 2004 Annual Report - 1
• Tailored services meeting needs from the 2004 Annual Report - 2
• Focusing audits on long-term compliance from the 2004 Annual Report
• Managing debt and outstanding returns from the 2004 Annual Report - 1
• Managing debt and outstanding returns from the 2004 Annual Report - 2
• Managing debt and outstanding returns from the 2004 Annual Report - 3
• Adjudicating and ruling on the law from the 2004 Annual Report
• Using the full force of the law from the 2004 Annual Report

Date published: 15 Nov 2004

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