Working to help customers during a busy time of year

12 June 2013

Working to help customers during a busy time of year

Inland Revenue has acknowledged that increased demand on its contact centres so far this year has meant that people are experiencing delays when contacting the department by phone, or are not always able to get through on very busy days.

Group Manager, Customer Services, Eleanor Young said that the contact centres received over a million calls in April and May this year compared to just over 500,000 for the same time in 2012.

“While we have answered a similar number of calls as we did this time last year, the increased demand has created challenges for our contact centres, and we acknowledge the difficulties and frustration this high demand is creating for customers trying to contact us.

“We are doing all that we can to manage demand and we have put on extra people to help answer calls and correspondence. This includes over 100 people who will work for us in a temporary capacity over the coming months and a number of internal people who have worked on our phones before.

Ms Young said that Inland Revenue has created more voice self-service options for the most frequent queries and is encouraging people to use its online services.

“We have undertaken a project that examined just over 2000 general enquiry calls in July last year and we identified that queries from customers were often in regard to things which can be done via our secure online services.

“We are making it easier for people to do more online at a time that suits them and so they don’t have to wait on the phones. By using our secure online services customers can check if they qualify for a refund, update their details, check Working for Families Tax Credits, Child Support or Student Loan balances and register or submit a GST return,” Ms Young said.

“We have also added more information to our ‘Contact Us’ page of the website to help customers to easily find information to their most frequent queries”.

Information on this tax year is available at http://www.ird.govt.nz/tax2013. To register for myIR go to http://www.ird.govt.nz/online-services/campaign-myir.html

ENDS

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