HM Revenue & Customs is using artificial intelligence (AI) to recruit staff, with some customer service agents being hired without ever speaking to a human.
The taxman has been under fire for months over poor customer service – and a report last week revealed that taxpayers collectively spent almost 800 years waiting to speak to an adviser last year.
It has now emerged that junior roles – including customer service advisers – are being hired purely using AI.
Applicants send their CV and a 1,000-word statement, before being sent a video link only to be greeted by a pre-recorded video in which they are asked six questions, the Sunday Times reported.
If successful, candidates can accept a job at HMRC by clicking a button – meaning they do not speak to a human until their first day in the role.
The technology is provided through a company called Outmatch, which touts the tagline “treat your candidates like your best customers”.
HMRC has consistently failed to meet its customer service targets for almost all of the last five years. Frozen tax thresholds have dragged millions more people into the tax net, causing a surge in demand for its helpline service.
One worker, who said they were hired at HMRC’s office in Nottingham without speaking to a person, said: “You’d expect the job interview to be with a human, but they were all pre-recorded questions. It was so daft and the questions themselves were waffle.”
He also said that staff at the office were demoralised, adding: “In the first couple of weeks it became very clear there were a lot of malingerers in HMRC who chat and eat snacks at their desks all day. In the office there are sweets and cakes and crisps everywhere you look.
“I pay tax and want to know that every penny handed over to the Government is being used appropriately, but it offends me to see how dysfunctional it is at HMRC and how idle some staff are.”
Earlier this year, HMRC was forced to abandon plans to close phone lines for six months every summer after Chancellor Jeremy Hunt intervened. It has since been given an additional £51m funding to help staff answer more calls.
Spending watchdog the National Audit Office has previously said that out of a sample of tax queries made to HMRC, half required the help of an adviser and could not be solved simply by speaking with a robot.
But even in instances where taxpayers speak to advisers, HMRC’s own audits from 2023-24 found they had not fully complied with procedures in a third of sampled telephone and correspondence.
The taxman has desperately been trying to digitise its services so more employees can focus on more complex tax cases, which have risen in volume as more people begin to pay taxes they never previously had to due to frozen thresholds.
To reduce call handling, the government department “deflected” nearly a third of calls online in the first 11 months of 2023-24 – up from a quarter the year before.
But of the callers who were deflected, only 28pc reported being satisfied with the service they had received.
An HMRC spokesman told the Sunday Times: “All customer service applicants complete online testing prior to interview and, if recruited, receive up to 10 weeks of comprehensive training and observation before answering calls, with ongoing support available from experienced colleagues.”
Source Agencies
