Mark DearnleyChief Digital & Information Officer

HMRC: from paper and phones to a multi-channel digital service

8 March 2016

70%government transactions

of all

41mindividual customers

5mbusiness

customers

15%

Net reduction

in baseline costs by

2020

£1.3bnReinvestment in

digital transformation

£517.7bn revenue

HMRC at a glance

Our channels in 2014/15

220moutbound

letters

50minbound

calls

300m consumer

740m business

£74mprint costs

16minbound letters

online transactions

that supports our Making Tax Digital plans

Webchat Telephone Face to faceSocial media

Digital services

Co-browsing

Moving to a multi-channel approach

• We’re running (we believe) the largest virtual contact centre on the planet

• Can manage contact peaks more effectively• Integrating telephony with scanned mail and new

channels like webchat and social media• Rolled out to 22k staff• Configured the hosted service in 9 months, and

migrated it in just 9 weeks• And kept legacy service running while we

migrated!

A virtualised call centre

• Single, digital view of customer contact• Supports our virtual network – any adviser, any

time can tell you how we’re dealing with your query

• 8.9m live mail items scanned so far• 537k items scanned in January 2016• At peak, 7.2k items an hour being requested from

work queue for processing by our caseworkers

And scanning all our white mail

Personal tax account

Business tax account

Third party software

Multi-channel Digital Tax Platform (MDTP)

ITMP ETMP Customs andInt’l Trade

3 core tax platforms

APIs APIs

Integration layer

Digital Tax Platform: underpins new services

• Pilots for both began in 2015• For SA16:

600 staff trained on webchat

Webchat hours of service in offices were extended to 22:00

Working from home trial provided service until midnight during final weeks of the peak

Final chat finished at 1am on 1st Feb

Monitoring of social media for customer feedback, enabling rapid incident resolution

Webchat and VA: new ways to get help

• 257k interactions with ‘Ask Ruth’ virtual assistant

Main queries for Ruth were lost User ID and/or password

• 114k webchats between customers and HMRC advisers

Of these, over 77% confirmed they would otherwise have phoned - this translates to over 88k calls

Webchat and VA: seeing results during SA16

Launching co-browsing

• Sharing the customer’s screen during a webchat session

• We’re starting by supporting customers logging on to our digital services

• Next phases will help customers navigate their online returns, forms and calculators

• Customers will be able to exchange data securely with HMRC online

• Beta available for Personal Tax Account/ Agent Online Self Serve in early 2016/17

• Text or email will prompt customer they have a message in their secure inbox

• Will gather customer feedback at every stage of design via our research team

Secure messaging coming soon

HMRCCustomers• Can interact with HMRC via the

device of their choice• A better service: satisfaction scores

for digital services routinely 80%+• Help is available at the right time for

them• Enables them to stay in the digital

channel, which means their issue is resolved faster

• Can give one to many support, increasing our productivity

• Where possible we can direct customers to the relevant website pages so they can serve themselves

• But also provide one-to-one support where a customer needs extra help

What all of this means for:

480k more returns online(now 89% online)

paper down 21%

41kless calls(down 7%)

88kfurther callsdeflected by

webchat

Phone wait times

halved(down to 5.16 mins)

Channel shift: comparing SA15 to SA16

• SA16 has given us lots to build on • Business tax account users can already service

most of their basic needs through the account• 2016 will be about growing the functionality available

to users while ensuring it is increasingly tailored and personalised

• Personal tax account will see lots more services coming soon! – something for most UK indviduals to use and benefit from by the summer

• Now realising the HMRC ambition to provide the right channel, at the right time, on the right device to help our customers help themselves….

What comes next?

Thank you

Follow our progress at hmrcdigital.blog.gov.uk