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Published:   |   Last Updated: January 30, 2025

Work with the IRS to improve taxpayer access to telephone and in-person assistance

Objective 4

Background

When taxpayers need IRS assistance filing and paying their federal taxes, two of the primary service channels they use are calling telephone lines and seeking in-person assistance at Taxpayer Assistance Centers (TACs). The IRS reports its performance assisting callers on the telephone lines using a metric called Level of Service (LOS), which fails to measure several industry standard factors. TAS has advocated for the IRS to adopt a more comprehensive measure of phone service that includes the quality of the caller’s experience. Although it is commendable that the IRS reported an LOS of 88 percent on its Accounts Management (AM) toll-free phone lines during Filing Season 2024, that calculation includes calls where the IRS routed a caller to an automated response when they wanted to reach a live assistor, calls where the CSR was unable to answer the caller’s questions, and calls where the taxpayer had to call multiple times or was unsatisfied with the service they received from a CSR for other reasons. As such, the LOS is neither a good measurement of service nor an accurate reflection of the taxpayer experience.

Highlights

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1.

Status

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2.

Expected Completion Date

09/30/2025

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3.

Activities

Activity 1: Advocate for the discontinuation of the Level of Service measure.

Activity 2: Propose new methods of measuring taxpayer experience that include metrics related to quality of service provided for the IRS to put in place by the end of fiscal year (FY) 2025.

Activity 3: Advocate for the IRS to give callers an opportunity to opt into a post-call quality survey before they connect to a CSR by the end of FY 2025.

Activity 4: Promote expanded TAC hours of operation beyond 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, including regular Saturday hours, to be in place by the end of FY 2025 for all TAC offices.

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4.

Actions Completed

1st Quarter

TAS participated in multiple discussions with the IRS Transformation and Strategy Office regarding ‘Conversational Routing Reporting Metrics’. These efforts focused on revising the Level of Service (LOS) formulas to account for total call attempts and include calls resolved through automation in the calculations. Once Artificial Intelligence (AI) is implemented, LOS is expected to improve as customers will only need to speak with representatives for issues that AI cannot resolve.

With the FY 2025 Filing Season underway, we are offering expanded services such as callback options, chatbot functionality, and enhanced online tools. However, current plans do not include a post-call quality survey. Advocacy for implementing this survey will resume after the filing season.

While recognizing the need for additional assistance hours during this busy period, resource constraints prevent extended service hours. Advocacy for extended hours will also resume following the filing season.

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Next Steps

TAS will continue to monitor the methods IRS uses to measure taxpayer LOS throughout the filing season and will provide recommendations for improvements as needed.

Advocacy for extended hours and implementing the post-call quality survey will also resume following the filing season.

 

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