GAO: IRS Telephone Help Wait-Time at 6-Year High

The Government Accountability Office today released 2010 Tax Filing Season: IRS’s Performance Improved in Some Key Areas, but Efficiency Gains Are Possible in Others (GAO-11-111):

Compared to 2009, the percentage of callers seeking live assistance who received it improved in 2010 and the accuracy of answers remained high, at over 90 percent. However, the average wait time increased. Further, IRS’s annual goal for providing caller assistance was lower than any of the preceding 5 years. However, IRS lacks a standard for what constitutes good customer telephone service that could be compared to its annual goals. Such a standard would make the gap between the annual goals and the standard more transparent.

About the Author

Paul Caron

Paul Caron was named Duane and Kelly Roberts Dean of Pepperdine University School of Law on June 1, 2017. Dean Caron joined the Pepperdine faculty in 2013 after serving as the Dorothy and Leonard Straus Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law in the spring semesters of 2010 through 2013. He served as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at Pepperdine in 2015-2017. Before coming to Pepperdine, he was Associate Dean of Faculty and Charles Hartsock Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

4 responses to “GAO: IRS Telephone Help Wait-Time at 6-Year High”

Bob

January 18, 2011

This could be called the Edith Hamilton report because it is based on the Mythology of Call-Site Data Collection. IRS really doesn’t know how many people had their questions answered; no one took a poll. They just know how many people got a busy signal, and how many people hung up after being on hold for a while. Did all, some or none of these people call back later, when they had more time and patience? Did they call back several times before getting their questions answered? Who knows? Commercial call centers, like airlines, make assumptions based on busy signal and hang-up data. Do the same assumptions work for a government operation? Probably not.