Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 11
11
Accepted
Teleperformance, the contractor responsible for HMPO’s customer support telephone line, failed to meet its service...
Conclusion
Teleperformance, the contractor responsible for HMPO’s customer support telephone line, failed to meet its service level agreement of answering 80% of calls within 30 seconds from March 2022 to July 2022. In May, it only managed to answer 14% of calls within 30 seconds.17 We asked the Department about an example of a constituent having attempted to contact customer support several times over one week and had been hung up on each time. The Department and HMPO both agreed that there had been “severe shortcomings” in their customer service and that the level of service provided was “completely unacceptable”. They asserted that once they became aware that Teleperformance staff were hanging up on customers, they took immediate action.18
Government Response Summary
The government describes actions already taken, stating that HM Passport Office has worked closely with Teleperformance and Sopra Steria to help ensure that they meet the required service level throughout 2023, and has appointed an additional supplier to provide greater resilience, estimating around £2 million savings over two years.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
4.3 For the work of Teleperformance and Sopra Steria, HM Passport Office has worked closely with them to help ensure that they meet the required service level throughout 2023. 4.6 While Teleperformance did not meet the required standard until August 2022, HM Passport Office worked with them constructively to resolve this as quickly as possible. Following the introduction of a number of improvements, Teleperformance have met the required service levels for call answering since August 2022. 4.7 However, as part of lessons learned from last year, HM Passport Office has added greater resilience to its provision of customer contact services by appointing an additional supplier. Serco, who commenced this work on 22 March 2023, will handle approximately 25% of calls to the Passport Adviceline and provide extra resilience to Teleperformance, with the overall contact centre spend estimated to deliver around £2 million savings over a two-year period.