Unlocking Customer Trust:...

Unlocking Customer Trust: Reassurance Strategies for HMRC

Building Confidence and Reducing Contact Through Enhanced Digital Experiences

Slide 1: The Reassurance Imperative

Why Building Trust is Key to Digital Adoption

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Defining Reassurance: Reassurance is removing doubts and fears, communicating functionality effectively and building trust with customers.
The Cost of Doubt: Progress chasing calls represent a significant drain on resources, offering little value to customers or HMRC.
Digital's Potential: The majority of customers are digitally capable, making task complexity the key barrier to online engagement, not ability.
Customer Priority: For customers, reassurance in digital services is important. Focus on the systems.
The Reassurance ROI: By prioritizing reassurance, HMRC can drive voluntary digital adoption and reduce costly, low-value contacts.

Slide 2: Understanding Customer Fears

Identifying and Addressing Key Pain Points

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Doubtful Minds: Customers worry about errors due to unfamiliar tasks, complex language, and unfamiliar systems, increasing likelihood.
High-Stakes Anxiety: Customers fear consequences of errors, lack opportunities to correct, perceived consequences are when things go wrong.
Multifaceted Reassurance: Reduce likelihood of mistakes and fears about the severity of the outcome to reduce worries and questions.
Anxious Feelings: Participants had feelings like anxious, worry and fear about the importance and impact of their taxes.
All Customers Need Reassurance: Reassurance should be required by all customers, not only those who are new or less confident.

Slide 3: Reassurance Throughout the Journey

From Initial Contact to Task Completion

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Journey Mapping: Map customer interactions, from initial awareness to task completion, to identify reassurance opportunities.
Notification: Provide relevant and tailored communications to reduce concern. Notification and tailoring are needed by all customers.
Guidance: Offer simple guidance to avoid additional navigation, reduce confusion and provide customer support.
Submitting: Provide confirmation emails to validate customers actions to validate them. Also, update emails regularly.
Next Steps: Provide progress updates to increase transparency, reassurance, process validation and improved HMRC processes.

Slide 4: Notification Strategies

Tailoring Communications for Clarity and Confidence

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Generic Pitfalls: Avoid generic reminders that lead to confusion about what is being required by the customer.
Tailored Experience: Tailoring is a strong theme for HMRC users, giving relevant and relevant guidance that fits to their circumstances.
Accounting: Wish HMRC gave all the things necessary to help customers complete their returns with confidence.
Clear Communications: Communications and forms need to be relevant to customers, this need occurred at notification.
Communication issues: Some users felt that some responses are very generic and abrupt, without specific communications.

Slide 5: Simplifying Guidance

Making Information Accessible and Understandable

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Lengthy, Complex Guidance: HMRC guidance can be too long, contain lots of explanation and use complex language, while not relevant.
Simplifying Language: Language used can be tailored, simplified and made more accessible to the user for understanding guidance.
Identifiers: Avoid complex terms, such as identifier numbers, it seemed complex to users and difficult to use.
Terminology: HMRC should avoid excessive technical terminology, acronyms and reference numbers, particularly for newer customers.
Understanding Matters: Guidance can risk hindering the understanding around the processes, driving the need for reassurance.

Slide 6: Improving Guidance Discoverability

Ensuring Customers Can Find the Help They Need

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Locating Difficulties: Participants found it difficult to locate guidance on GOV.uk and could not find the volume of guidance.
Googling Information: Customers have reported googling the information to find the relevant website for the forms they were searching for.
Easy to Find: It is easier to search on a search engine that takes customers to the HMRC website.
Navigation Issues: Difficulties can be found navigating pages and overwhelming amount of guidance available to HMRC users.
Channel Dropout: Lack of visible guidance can risk customers dropping out of the channel and needing to find other channels.

Slide 7: Access to Quick Support

Offering Timely Assistance to Prevent Frustration

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Chat Options: Access to support functions, such as quick chat to avoid people defaulting to the helpline.
Quick Support: Chat options and email messages are easier to navigate, instead of being on hold with the support team.
Live Chats: While completing a form, have a live chat open from HMRC to steer users away from a phone call.
Support functions: HMRC needs to make the space for quicker access to support, such as a quick chat function.
Live Chats: Offer live chats and easy to access functions instead of phone calls to help assist users.

Slide 8: Confirmation Emails

Validating Customer Actions and Providing Peace of Mind

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Email Solutions: Solutions that emerged, such as strong desires among participants with their confidence in self-service tasks.
Email Validations: Customers need a quick means to validate reassurance, providing confidence that they have submitted correctly.
Easy Means: Emails provide an easy means for customers to validate and feel reassured that they have been submitted correctly.
Time Issues: Interviewees felt the time between raising an issue and receiving a response felt long, needs to be quicker.
Email validations: Confirmation emails may be a quick win, however, occasional updates is important.

Slide 9: Progress Updates

Increasing Transparency and Managing Expectations

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Transparency: A desire for transparency and understanding the process after the submission. Provide them with information.
Progress Sentiments: Progress updates can provide greater transparency and reassurance about processing of tasks and needs.
Managing Expectations: Actively manage customers' expectations by notifying them if their query is being passed between teams.
Progress updates: The organization could actively manage the customers' expectations with their queries.
Post Submission: Participants wanted transparency and to have an understanding about their task submissions.

Slide 10: Leveraging Existing Strengths

Building on Successful Elements of HMRC Services

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Chunking Sections: Breaking down text allows participants to easily understand the information in digestible parts for easy comprehension.
Bullet points: Bullet points are great for digesting information, while long paragraphs on a screen is difficult to take in.
Form Features: Helpful features such as information boxes and open-ended boxes have been improvements over the years.
Recognized Processes: Elements of HMRC services provide reassurance and processes that were improved over the years.
Helpful tools: Progress trackers are helpful and are supportive of users and are good tools, however, is lacking detail.

Slide 11: Progress Tracking Details

Providing Specific Updates on Task Status

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HMRC Processes: Recognitions within the interview, HMRC should implement more widely across their other services and systems.
Capitalizing Elements: Taking what has worked in these improved services and implementing these features across their other services.
Details Levels: Appetite for a greater level of detail to progress the updates within the HMRC systems, better updates.
Specificity: Consider making them more specific to include stages such as checking, processing, returning and no corrections needed.
Updates: Details to the progress updates, more specific to include stages, such as the ones previously mentioned.

Slide 12: Digital Contact Volume

Analyzing the impact of reassurance messaging.

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Volume increase: Weekly digital claims increased by 112% in 2 months following Spring Budget announcement compared to 2 months prior.
Progress chasing: Progress chasing calls increased by just 2% in that time, claims and progress are closely aligned.
Summer calls: Actual calls are significantly lower than predicted, there has been a change of calls.
Reassurance Messages: Reassurance messages may be reducing calls in portion to submitted claims.
Causality Needed: Analysis over a longer period is needed to determine the effects of reassurance messages on calls.

Slide 13: SMS Notification Success

Reducing Calls with SMS Notifications.

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Effective Messaging: SMS notifications are effective at reducing progress chasing calls.
Call Reduction: Since implementing reassurance messages calls have significantly been reduced.
Increased Claims: Progress chasing calls increased by 2% despite a 180% increase in claims since SMS notifications.
Customer Feedback: 98% of customers say reassurance is important when dealing with HMRC online, improving customer satisfaction.
Alleviated Frustration: SMS notifications alleviate customer frustrations, leading to a decrease in calls.

Slide 14: Preferred Communication Channels

Customers Across or Outside the UK

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Channel Access: 400 participants, broad range of HMRC customers who live across or outside the UK. Accessed via HMRC.
Digital Literacy: Sample sourced via the HMRC user panel, there is a bias toward digital literacy.
Channel Type: Online, telephone or digital usage from participants in the UK.
Support: Support from customer service while submitting forms.
Error Solutions: Letting HMRC know of a customer error or an HMRC error.

Slide 15: Thank You

For Your Partnership

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Gratitude: Thank you for your time and attention today.
Collaborative Future: We value our partnership and look forward to collaborating on innovative solutions.
Driving Change: Together, we can drive positive change and improve the customer experience.
Key Contacts: Please reach out to Marta Matusiak or Joshua Rowlands with any questions or feedback.
Resources: Access additional resources and information at [link to resources].