More than 45 per cent of calls to Inland Revenue disconnected in June

Thursday, 26 July 2018

Demand on customer services increased after issues with the MyIR online services.

Almost half of people who called Inland Revenue in June were hung up on.

An Official Information Act request showed 45 percent - 286,392 calls out of 630,921 - were disconnected before entering the queue.

Another 79,621 callers hung up themselves while waiting to reach the customer service team.

National finance spokesperson Paul Goldsmith said the figures reflected a failure to plan for the peak period.

**READ MORE:

National MP Paul Goldsmith called on the Revenue Minister to 'crack the whip' at Inland Revenue.

* IRD sends man bill for one cent**

*** Inland Revenue apologises for delays

Revenue Minister Stuart Nash is responsible for Inland Revenue.

* Angry accountants threaten paper returns

* IRD pleads for patience as staff strike**

IRD are under fire again after dropping 45 per cent of the calls it received in June.

'This is certainly not good enough,' Goldsmith said.

The combination of ongoing upgrades to their system and industrial relations issues, including low morale, compounded the situation, he said.

'The purpose of the business transformation project was for much more of it to be done easier online and reduce the need for people to call,' Goldsmith said.

Goldsmith said Revenue Minister Stuart Nash needed 'to crack the whip and demand better outcomes'.

The failed phone calls was the latest technical glitch to cause headaches for Inland Revenue customers.

In June, accountants threatened to file GST returns on paper after Inland Revenue suffered problems with its online systems.

A spokeswoman for Nash declined to comment and referred enquiries back to Inland Revenue.

Bernadette Newman, a customer segment leader with Inland Revenue, said while the volume of calls in 2018 were similar to those in 2017, some of the tax issues were more complex, increasing the average call time.

'Additionally, in June we experienced some technical issues with our online myIR service which impacted on customers' usability of the service,' she said.

'This led to an increase in calls to our contact centres by customers who were experiencing issues and resulted in more calls having to be turned away.'

John Cuthbertson, tax and financial services leader at Chartered Accountants Australia and NZ, said the number of failed calls reflected a developing perfect storm.

'A perfect storm can arise when there are access issues with MyIR as taxpayers then seek to contact Inland Revenue through the phone system and secure email,' he said.

'A cascading overload can result over all communication channels, especially during peak demand periods related to return filing and payment dates.'

Between April and June this year, Inland Revenue received 1.3 million calls.

Just under 400,000 were disconnected.

During the quieter November to January period, IRD received 589,268 calls and 2701 failed to get through.

The average wait time for the busy period also increased threefold, to 8.6 minutes per call that was queued.

Inland Revenue said 80 per cent of customers in June eventually spoke to a customer service officer, however, they did not say how many times on average people called before getting through.