While it’s not uncommon for a nation’s citizens to dislike its inland revenue department, these days, the anger may be less about the taxes and more about the quality of customer service provided by that organization.
Let’s face it: government agencies don’t have any competition, so they aren’t driven to succeed with customer service to the same degree that commercial organizations are. And the evidence is pretty good that many of them simply don’t seem to care how efficiently they are run, despite what they say.
In Britain, Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs – the British equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) -- tops the list of organizations that cause call center frustration, sometimes referred to as “phone rage.” This is according to PleasePress1.com, which maintains a library of shortcuts for individuals hoping to get around automated responses and terrible interactive voice response (IVR) systems. Second on the list was Ford Motor Company (which, as the company ought to note, does have competitors.)
PleasePress1.com produced the list of worst “phone rage” offenders based on feedback from thousands of the site’s users and an analysis of hundreds of phone menus, according to a recent Bloomberg article. A menu's number of options, length of introductions, as well as the amount of time it takes to reach someone, were factored into the index. Since the launch of the website, insurance companies, banks and mass transit organizations have generally filled out the top 10 when it comes to caller frustration.
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One of the factors that may lead directly to the highest levels of phone range is offering too wide an array of self-service menu choices. According to PleasePress1.com founder Nigel Clarke, callers to Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customers (HMRC) are offered more than 400 menu options across six services.
It’s enough to make your brain start convulsing just thinking about it.
Of course, we’re no better here in the U.S. The IRS is one of the most oft-complained about government agencies in the nation when it comes to contact center support, and it hasn’t improved as of late with new budget cuts. In fact, it has been estimated that of all the people who attempt to contact the IRS by phone, only about two-thirds of them ever succeed.