HMRC Web Chat

dori2o

Did anyone on here utilise the Web Chat online help facility over the past 2-3 weeks when completing their online tax return?

HMRC had staff online until at least 10pm on Thursday and Friday last week and until midnight on Saturday and Sunday.

Did you know about the new Web Chat facility?

If so how did you find it, i.e. ease of use, time taken, too fast/slow, did you have any problems etc?

Did you need to ask a question in which the adviser needed access your records and so had to ask you security questions to verify your identity and access your tax records?

How did you feel about giving your name address etc over the Web Chat client so that the adviser could confirm your identity?

If you didn't need to give your information in order to verify identity, how would you feel if you had of been asked, or if you were asked in the future when using the service, especially considering that we are always being told to be extra vigilant when providing information on a computer/via email etc etc?

Would you simply refuse and use other contact methods,i.e.telephone?

Would you use the service again?

Would you consider using the service as your first point of contact for all tax queries, even those not related to self assessment or completing the tax return?

Would you recommend the service to a friend/family member?


This is for my own curiosity only and is not an official request for information from HMRC who provide their own customer surveys to collate such data.

It's just likley that I will have to use the system (as an adviser) in the near future and wondered what people think of it.

Thanks.

GingerBob_3

The best way to interact with HMRC is by letter. Don't phone them and don't engage in "web-chats" with them.

Darksparkle

Working until midnight, ridiculous!

FOREVER21

Darksparkle wrote: »

Given the person reading the letter and the person on the phone can be one in the same, why do you prefer letters?

The people on the phone will not necessarily be the same people who read the letters, because of the extended opening hours for telephone calls a trawl would have been made amongst HMRC staff to get people to answer the phone, as a result they might not even be SA staff.


We have seen many times on threads that HMRC can often give advice over the phone only to have it changed later. For me it has to be the written word every time with HMRC. At best telephone if it is urgent but get them to confirm the point in writing.

dori2o

FOREVER21 wrote: »

The people on the phone will not necessarily be the same people who read the letters, because of the extended opening hours for telephone calls a trawl would have been made amongst HMRC staff to get people to answer the phone, as a result they might not even be SA staff.


We have seen many times on threads that HMRC can often give advice over the phone only to have it changed later. For me it has to be the written word every time with HMRC. At best telephone if it is urgent but get them to confirm the point in writing.

Actually the additional staff taking calls on Friday, Saturday and Sunday were SA trained, it was a requirement in order to be allowed to do the extra hours that you had the necessary skills and knowledge to deal with SA calls. As was the case with Web Chat advisers.

Letter writing is the old fashioned way of dealing with any organisation and will soon die out. Even telephone calls are expected to fall from the top of the most popular contact methods table.

Online/interactive is the way forward and even within HMRC which has resisted for so long email will finally be implemented sooner rather than later.

booksurr

GingerBob wrote: »

The best way to interact with HMRC is by letter. Don't phone them and don't engage in "web-chats" with them.

since all your posts consist of making negative comments about any public sector organisation you can I think your comment in this post is simply a continuance of a personal agenda rather than being an objective assessment of what is best


Dorio is (we think) a member of staff at HMRC and has used these boards as an (informal?) means of sounding out our views on HMRC initiatives and to that end I think responses should give relevant feedback

- I was not aware of the web air facility, but then I would not have been looking for it as support on completing tax returns since I was not expecting any tax technical issues in those remaining to be done

- obviously without having used it the following opinion is purely subjective: it sounds like a good idea and presumably slightly more time effective than dealing by e mail when giving answers if it involved either steering the "caller" to existing web guidance or interactively engaging with them in the way expected of the "modern" generation.

- how much spare capacity was available if something went wrong would be my main concern. I know of a colleague still submitting client SA returns at 23:21 so the main issue that concerned them was simply system resilience in the face of last minute demand. Bearing in mind that HSBC had that service denial attack the day before we were very fearful of a similar situation at HMRC and were relying on them allowing an extension as happened once before

agrinnall

booksurr wrote: »

since all your posts consist of making negative comments about any public sector organisation you can I think your comment in this post is simply a continuance of a personal agenda rather than being an objective assessment of what is best

Hear, hear! GingerBob is consistently negative about a range of organisations, and like you I'm getting heartily sick of it.

Pennywise

Written communication with HMRC remains our preference because there's evidence of who said what. Whether email/web forms or posted letters - the evidence is there.

Webchat and phone calls are the same in my mind. There's no "audit trail" of who said what.

When HMRC are over-keen on imposing penalties, it is often necessary to have evidence of what's been said and who by, to defend yourself against them, and get the penalties reduced or withdrawn. Also, when claiming compensation for wasted time, etc., when they fail to do what they've agreed to do or repeatedly make mistakes.

For phone calls, HMRC should record them, but in reality, it's like pulling hen's teeth to get a copy or transcription of a phone call out of them - always the same answer, "not available" - that either means they can't be bothered to trace it, it was never recorded in the first place, or their systems are so poor, they can't find it.

As for webchats, I'd only use them if there's an easily printable/downloadable transcription of the full conversation readily available. If it's one of these systems where the text is lost when it rolls up/down the screen and can't easily be recovered and printed, then I'm not interested.

GingerBob_3

agrinnall wrote: »

Hear, hear! GingerBob is consistently negative about a range of organisations, and like you I'm getting heartily sick of it.

Well I'm sorry about that, but you should realise that all these organisations I complain about inhabit the stinking depths of a cess-pit: DVLA, HMRC, Insurance companies, CRAs and so on - they are all tarred with the same slime-ridden brush. Minimise your dealings with them, and only ever interact with them in writing. Do not ever give them your phone number, nor any irrelevant personal information.

dori2o

Pennywise wrote: »

Written communication with HMRC remains our preference because there's evidence of who said what. Whether email/web forms or posted letters - the evidence is there.

Webchat and phone calls are the same in my mind. There's no "audit trail" of who said what.

When HMRC are over-keen on imposing penalties, it is often necessary to have evidence of what's been said and who by, to defend yourself against them, and get the penalties reduced or withdrawn. Also, when claiming compensation for wasted time, etc., when they fail to do what they've agreed to do or repeatedly make mistakes.

For phone calls, HMRC should record them, but in reality, it's like pulling hen's teeth to get a copy or transcription of a phone call out of them - always the same answer, "not available" - that either means they can't be bothered to trace it, it was never recorded in the first place, or their systems are so poor, they can't find it.

As for webchats, I'd only use them if there's an easily printable/downloadable transcription of the full conversation readily available. If it's one of these systems where the text is lost when it rolls up/down the screen and can't easily be recovered and printed, then I'm not interested.

All phone calls to and from the contact centre/customer service centres are recorded. Calls to/from the back office are not recorded as they are made using a skype phone and not via the contact centres telephone software.

I'm not yet trained in the use of Web Chat but based on my colleagues experience this is what I can gather.

The conversation is not automatically recorded, neither is there currently the ability to provide a transcript via email etc as other companies can do.

However, so long as you are able before the conversation closes you can copy and paste the whole conversation from top to bottom into a word document.

This is how staff are currently having their web chats quality assurance checked, so I see no reason why the customer cannot do the same.

Whilst you are still in the same conversation you can scroll up and down to re-trace what has already been said earlier in the conversation. Therefore it ispossible to copyandpaste as long as this is done before you close the conversation.

Once the conversation is closed the information is lost.

I believe that the copy/paste function also provides the advisers Name/Pseudonym which is logged only to them and nobody else, and the date and time of the conversation.

The issue of being able to offer a transcript of the conversation is under discussion I believe.

As for theimpact that Web Chat has had on the rest of the service, having experienced 13 other January deadlines, this is by far the quietest I have experienced on the telephone lines.

More returns than ever have been submitted before the deadline and more than ever done online, and the web chat service seemed to take away the calls we would normally receive asking for help/hand holding as the customer completed the form whist they had you on the phone. This freed up advisers to take other calls.This meant that call waiting times were much reduced from the state they were in just a few months ago, with many customers suprised when I introduced myself into the conversation given the wait they thought they were going to have.

So from my point of view it has been a success, and I am looking forward to receiving the training for the service and to get going with it.

I think the one downside is probably the lack of available technical advisers, but it's always the same in January no matter what method of contact is used as there simply are not enough available, but they won't recruit more as during the rest of the year there is not the scope for them.

dori2o

GingerBob wrote: »

Well I'm sorry about that, but you should realise that all these organisations I complain about inhabit the stinking depths of a cess-pit: DVLA, HMRC, Insurance companies, CRAs and so on - they are all tarred with the same slime-ridden brush. Minimise your dealings with them, and only ever interact with them in writing. Do not ever give them your phone number, nor any irrelevant personal information.

What a charming person you really are.