If the current government are really serious about reducing compliance costs for small business, they could start by getting the IRD call centre into shape. Statistics that I released today make for damning reading. Here are a few highlights:
- Last year over a million callers to IRD numbers gave up before their call had even been answered
- A further 260,000 callers ditched their calls after being placed on hold
- The longest wait time for a call to the IRD was 2 hours and 29 minutes
- Over 200,000 callers waited for over quarter of an hour to have their call answered
National is always talking about productivity, but how does having people waiting for hours on end to speak to the IRD help with that? Millions of dollars are being lost every day as Kiwis sit around waiting for the IRD to pick up the phone.
In the past four years the IRD has dished out over $31 million in redundancy payments. Clearly that’s having an impact on its customer service record. It’s time for the National government to get this mess sorted out.
What were the waiting times when labour were in government in their las three terms in government?
How do you communicate with the IRD when they dont answer the phone I have got $100′s of $ penalties for a late filing plus additional penalties, however I do not have the time to wait on the phone for 45 minutes b4 i can speak to someone. I have actually got a job to do and have a busy schedule.
Must be one big holiday camp at the IRD.
The IRD is like the National Government put every thing on hold and wait just like the economy.
The country has definitely improved under John Key, John Banks and Peter Dunne. The country is going ahead in leaps and bounds and there is a real upbeat feeling out there in the community.
The country’s economy will be roaring by National’s third term with the strategic growth policies they have put in place.
Yes, and to think the liberals have stolen and perverted it into propaganda explains why ticket sales are down.
Studylink and WINZ are not much better. I have set up online account for IRD, Studylink and WINZ and often after going through the online process get told to ring the contact centre. Oh and try booking an appointment online for Lower Hutt through the WINZ website, you can’t as the computer system the Lower Hutt uses is different to the rest of the country.
Maybe publish the DDI numbers for Peter Dunne’s office and suggest folks give him a call instead? He clearly has plenty of time on his hands.
How about this instead Trevor: ‘It is wrong to engineer a profoundly deregulated system exclusively favouring a callous self-important tax-evasive elite in a small social democratic nation, sit back as a career politician while the burden of maintaining social cohesion falls to an increasingly exhausted and anxious working population, then pontificate about the moral failings of the isolated, alienated and dispossessed in a pathetic attempt at populist politics which has already infuriated the bulk of one’s own Party twice in recent days.’
What Former said.
Stop the madness, Labour. Stop it now.
Shearer must do his job and dump Mallard. Or the caucus must do their job and dump the “leader”. Just get on with it.
Earth to former real people, and their faithful three legged poodle(h t h)… this post was written by chris hipkins….. If you have any emotional/mental issues with trevor mallard…. I suggest you take it up with either trevor himself, or your therapist…..
then maybe you could stop impersonating the behavior of nearly every government dept since advance team for the asset stripping operation has been playacting the part of being a government…..
While we are still having to put up with witless, and self serving drivel masquerading as serious argument, the johnny sparkles gang is stealing our birthright out from under us…
The debacle that the tax dept has become is replicating throughout the public service…..
This is an obvious tactic, designed to create the kind of relentless pressure on day to day living that makes having the time, and energy, to get involved in social, and economic debate impossible on any meaningful level….
But don’t you worry about that little boys and girls…. your contribution to the push to have your own descendants disenfranchised is welcome on the ninth floor of the beehive… that is, when johnny sparkles isn’t laughing at you for your gullibility…
Is this your new Gotcha, Chris? I hope you checked what the call drop-out rates were when you were in Government, because you might look silly if it turns out that they have improved.
Your last gotcha, where you worked with the PPTA to suggest the Minister of Education accessed Ministry information to track down teachers in schools and bully them, fell flat. Even the PPTA has apologised for claiming this. Turns out you’re just hoping if you don’t mention it again it will go away, though. I think if you want to keep your credibility you should apologise when you’re wrong.
Actually whodunnit, you can explain why the Govt thought it appropriate to write to the teachers’ employers when the teachers had only made representations in their personal capacity.
Until you can explain that sick attempt at naming and shaming, you are in no position to criticize Chris for highlighting the issues in our disintegrating public service.
Tim G, when a teacher emails on their school email address using school resources, identifying the school they are from then they are assuming representation of the school. If you owned a company and one of your employees was writing to somebody using the company’s email, then they shouldn’t be surprised if the other party cc’s you in the response.
@ whodunnit, and what about those who used their personal email? It would be a bit nasty to look them up and ‘out’ them, particularly if the BOT chair was a known Tory?
Jennifer try and keep up. The PPTA has accepted that the Minister didn’t access Ministry information to look up teachers who used their personal emails. The Minister only copied board chairs where teachers used their school emails.
Chris I believe this is yet another case where you shoot off before doing your homework (e.g. ACC increases last year). As my MP – whom like many others I did not for, I find your obsession with nonsense really disappointing.
Does Inland Revenue need to improve its service? Yes. Like any other company (honestly, if every consumer complained about the poor service they got from every company you would find those who actually demonstrated good service to be rare), they often fall short.
But is this the government or any government’s fault? No. And have the redundancies come from call centre staff? No. They are back office – business analysts, design advisors, project advisors etc etc.
In fact you will find that there are more bums on seats in the call centres answering more calls than ever before. But will these back office analysts – most of whom were employed within the boom years of the public service (1999-2008) – etc work in call centres? Heck no, it is well below their pay packet. Given so many started from the frontline (including the call centre) there is no way they would go back.
And would more call centres more staff solve things? Not really.
Basically wait times have been the bane of the IRD”s call centres right from the start – even when there was only 1 call centre in NZ based in NZ post building on Waterloo Quay.
MSM like the Herald et al have been conducting surveys on call centres including IRD since they first began to dominate the way many customers deal with enquiries – for example in 2006 the average wait time was a shocked. See http://www.nzherald.co.nz/inland-revenue/news/article.cfm?o_id=89&objectid=10376563
November 2008 they rolled out a call back service due to the same issues of waiting/missed calls/poor service etc. See http://www.ird.govt.nz/aboutir/media-centre/media-releases/2008/media-release-2008-11-06.html
Yet nothing improved. And it wont – not with silly people continuing to ring up with silly questions; the amount of people who know so little about tax (why they got a penalty, why they have been sent a default assessment, why they are getting a refund, why they owe WFF etc) is outstanding. Perhaps our tax system should be taught in schools – I find people seem to know less these days than what they did 20 years ago.
Then there is the people who ring as soon as they get an IRD envelope – without opening it first!
So when you weed out all the time wasting muppets you find you are actually left with a small number of real callers, the ones who have real questions – questions that often take time to sort out.
So my suggestion: get the masses educated so that they stop wasting peoples time, patience & sanity.
In conjunction with that, get people to register their IRD numbers online so that they can do their returns and contact IRD via secure email online. It’s faster, hassle free & best of all you dont have to listen to the rubbish music.