Department for Work and Pensions: Telephone Services
(asked on 20th March 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many calls to his Department were (a) received and (b) answered by service area in each of the last five years; and what the average wait time for such calls was in each such area in each such year.
DWP plans resourcing according to forecasted telephony demand in an effort to keep wait times down. Wait time performance is frequently reviewed, and where DWP’s telephony is delivered by an outsourced provider we use the Key Performance Indicator of percentage of calls answered.
The data below shows how many calls were (a) received, (b) answered and (c) average speed of answer for each service area in each of the last five years. CFCD data is only available for the last 2 years.
Financial Year | Service Area | Calls Offered | Calls Answered | Average Speed of Answer hh:mm:ss |
2022-2023 | CFCD | 2,181,364 | 1,870,726 | 0:06:37 |
2022-2023 | CMG | 1,969,296 | 1,579,458 | 0:14:09 |
2022-2023 | Disability Services | 8,031,706 | 5,916,291 | 0:18:47 |
2022-2023 | Retirement Services | 9,563,255 | 8,065,542 | 0:06:22 |
2022-2023 | Universal Credit | 15,583,662 | 14,504,606 | 0:03:00 |
2022-2023 | Working Age | 3,848,833 | 2,837,717 | 0:18:55 |
Data above covers the period 1/4/22 – 19/3/23 representing the latest available data for the current financial year. | ||||
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2021-2022 | CFCD | 2,266,123 | 2,044,015 | 0:04:32 |
2021-2022 | CMG | 1,853,670 | 1,403,894 | 0:17:06 |
2021-2022 | Disability Services | 7,788,882 | 5,883,066 | 0:17:45 |
2021-2022 | Retirement Services | 8,489,843 | 6,660,842 | 0:09:11 |
2021-2022 | Universal Credit | 18,406,628 | 16,100,254 | 0:05:08 |
2021-2022 | Working Age | 4,682,665 | 3,526,054 | 0:17:35 |
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2020-2021 | CMG | 1,494,693 | 1,098,457 | 0:14:40 |
2020-2021 | Disability Services | 5,800,280 | 4,319,762 | 0:17:11 |
2020-2021 | Retirement Services | 7,053,720 | 5,440,280 | 0:08:43 |
2020-2021 | Universal Credit | 17,407,587 | 15,870,315 | 0:03:41 |
2020-2021 | Working Age | 5,151,549 | 3,884,057 | 0:16:55 |
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2019-2020 | CMG | 3,464,411 | 2,750,564 | 0:08:53 |
2019-2020 | Disability Services | 7,703,309 | 6,154,284 | 0:09:58 |
2019-2020 | Retirement Services | 9,338,493 | 7,866,169 | 0:04:52 |
2019-2020 | Universal Credit | 18,588,061 | 16,290,226 | 0:04:45 |
2019-2020 | Working Age | 9,901,097 | 7,073,534 | 0:15:48 |
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2018-2019 | CMG | 3,664,662 | 3,289,464 | 0:01:18 |
2018-2019 | Disability Services | 7,395,433 | 6,147,557 | 0:06:50 |
2018-2019 | Retirement Services | 9,567,951 | 8,496,762 | 0:03:06 |
2018-2019 | Universal Credit | 13,921,347 | 11,564,360 | 0:06:28 |
2018-2019 | Working Age | 17,032,506 | 12,699,993 | 0:11:49 |
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| Debt Recovery Line | Debt PAY Line (Inc SERCO) | |||
Year From - To | Offered | Answered | ASA | Offered | Answered | ASA |
Apr 2018 – Mar 2019 | 1511241 | 1319552 | N/A | N/A | 378723 | N/A |
Apr 2019 – Mar 2020 | 2185905 | 1493931 | 17:33 | 476005 | 423857 | 01:20 |
Apr 2020 – Mar 2021 | 1050818 | 833339 | 10:47 | 376987 | 354297 | 01:59 |
Apr 2021 – Mar 2022 | 1768821 | 1598025 | 05:13 | 823237 | 785246 | 01:45 |
Apr 2022 – Feb 2023 | 1604141 | 1390350 | 07:25 | 749320 | 705380 | 03:46 |
NBFH (National Benefit Fraud Hotline) – please note the line was shut down from April 20 to March 22 due to Covid.
April 22 to March 23 (WC 13/03) - Internal DWP team.
Average call waiting time: 6:13
Total calls received: 97,720
Total calls answered: 75,137
April 19 to 20 March 20 (Serco)
Average call waiting time: 38s
Total calls received: 123,341
Total calls answered 116,774
Sept 18 to March 19 (Serco)
Average call waiting time: 37s
Total calls received: 73,709
Total calls answered: 69,540
April 2018 to Sept 18 (Capita)
Average call waiting time: 57s
Total calls received: 70,959
Total calls answered: 66,070
Please note this information is derived from the Department’s management information designed solely for the purpose of helping the Department to manage its business. As such, it has not been subjected to the rigorous quality assurance checks applied to our published official statistics. As DWP holds the information internally, we have released it. However, it is possible information held by DWP may change due to operational reasons and we recommend that caution be applied when using it.