Prepared for the:
Canada Revenue Agency
May, 2014
Contract Number: 46558-143796/001/CY
Contract Award Date: March 18, 2013
Project Cost: $148,946.84 (HST included)
POR Number: 055-12

Prepared by:
Walker Consulting Group

For further information:
Media Relations
Canada Revenue Agency
4th Floor – 555 MacKenzie Avenue
Ottawa, ON K1A 0L5
Media.relations@cra-arc.gc.ca

Executive Summary (Qualitative)

Between December 2-11, 2013, Walker Consulting Group conducted twelve focus groups with individual Canadians from the general public, as well as SMEs and tax intermediaries in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto (four groups per city).

Overall, these focus groups revealed divergence in overall impressions of CRA across these three audiences, and pronounced divergence on the effectiveness of specific service functions within CRA. For the most part, CRA is viewed as honest, dedicated, and working to improve. CRA's service functions received passing grades from some, and good grades from others. In addition, the organization has shown signs of improvement, and signs of listening to clients. But some groups, tax intermediaries in particular, believe that CRA can do more, and needs to take significant steps to improve its overall service levels.

One of the most significant challenges resulting from these research findings for CRA is that Intermediaries, SMEs, and individuals have differing, and sometimes opposing points of view on the same parts of the organization. Our analysis suggests that these differences are in part a function of differing expectations, partly to do with attempting to have a one size fits all approach to certain aspects of service that do not easily fit that mold, and partly to do with the perceived level of organization and expertise within CRA. Moreover, there are concerns that recent cutbacks make efforts to improve less likely to bear fruit for client service in future.

The table below provides a summary illustration of general impressions of different aspects of CRA across different segments of the user population. The table illustrates the particular challenges that the organization faces as it seeks to serve the interests of different stakeholders.

Based on this, we believe specific improvements, tailored to each of these audiences, is the most likely means of enhancing perceptions of CRA's services.

In addition, a valuable asset in the toolkit for CRA is the MyAccount/MyBusinessAccount function. The more people that access and use those services, the more likely satisfaction is going to increase.

Based on participant feedback, the list of additional improvements for consideration by the CRA includes:

For Individuals:

• Introduction of a Chat function on the CRA website, to help steer those looking for certain information to that information more quickly.
• A review and revamp of the content on the CRA website, to re-organize the content in a more user friendly format, improve the search functionality, and to adjust the language to a more user friendly format.
• Simplification of tax forms. Some individuals felt that there would be value in seeking to find ways to reduce the number of pages of tax forms, or perhaps to let individuals know what forms they do and do not need to complete – perhaps a virtual "cheat sheet" that CRA could develop that would help steer individuals toward or away from certain forms, ensuring only ones that are relevant to them will be completed.

For SMEs:

• Establish a chat function on the CRA website, to direct people toward information they are looking for. This would serve to increase efficiency for SMEs, and would likely reduce the need for the telephone service, thereby increasing efficiency for CRA.
• Retool the CRA website to make it more intuitive. This includes exploring the option to revise the search function, move away from old style search capability (a couple of participants referred to the current model as "Boolean" search) and toward more modern search engine capabilities.
• Establish a dedicated area on the website that could enable SMEs in different businesses to gather relevant information on documentation, credits etc. that will be more likely to be required for their professions.
• Simplify the language on the website, for non-technical SME users.
• Introduce some modern mechanisms to make the telephone service more efficient for SMEs:
  • Establish a "call-back" function where people can leave their number in a virtual queue and CRA will call back at a fixed time (i.e. 20 minutes), rather than asking people to wait on the telephone for long stretches.
  • Empower customer service representatives to take greater ownership of the client while they are navigating through the telephone system – when a person is passed to another CSR rep, ensure that a) the SME doesn't have to re-identify themselves to someone else b) the SME actually gets to the other person.
  • Improve the CSR functionality of internal systems, to ensure that there are better capabilities of making notes to file about conversations between SMEs and Client service agents. This would be helpful in reducing how many times SMEs need to repeat the same information on multiple occasions to Client service agents.
• Hire or train more specialists, to deal with issues where strong expertise is required. Some of the SMEs felt that while front-line Client service agents were capable and friendly and helpful with basic information, there could be more people given more specialized knowledge in order to assist with technical issues (and in so doing speed up the process of dealing with SMEs).

For Tax Intermediaries:

• Push even more content and process online. Post more slips, and allow for more electronic submission of documents. Rely to an even greater degree on MyAccount/MyBusinessAccount, and help ensure more Canadians and Canadian Businesses know about it.
• Bring clarity to tax rules in certain areas that are particularly vague in Canada's system, such as estates and capital vs. expense rules. This will reduce cost in numerous ways: in reviews; in litigation proceedings; and in staff time.
• Hire and/or train more people at CRA to become specialists in at least one or two areas. The clear message was bring in fewer generalists, and hire or train more specialists. In so doing, move toward publishing names of experts in certain areas that intermediaries can contact directly.
• Consider re-introducing some functions that are specific and dedicated to intermediaries, both online and on the telephone. This would potentially create efficiencies, in that most of the specialist time could be dedicated to intermediaries, where most of the tough questions come from.
• Take steps to ensure that CRA spends its audit and compliance energy on the areas that will yield the biggest dollar benefit (with bigger players), rather than focusing so much energy on smaller players.
• Introduce some mechanisms to make the CRA telephone service more efficient:
  • Establish a "call-back" function where people can leave their number in a virtual queue and CRA will call back at a prescribed time, rather than asking people to wait on the telephone for long stretches of time.
  • Empower Client service agents to take greater ownership of the client while they are navigating through the telephone system – when a person is passed to another CSR rep, ensure that a) the SME doesn't have to re-identify themselves to someone else b) the SME actually gets to the other person.
  • Improve the CSR functionality of internal systems, to ensure that there are better capabilities of making notes to file about conversations between intermediaries, SMEs and Client service agents. This would be helpful in reducing how many times intermediaries need to repeat the same information on multiple occasions to Client service agents.

Finally, one of the major considerations we draw from this research is that there may be only minimal improvement in perceived service levels if "reducing the paper burden" is narrowly defined as the main way of accommodating the future needs of SMEs and intermediaries.

Our assessment is that from the perspective of these stakeholders, the real issue for CRA is reducing the total time and headache associated with completion of and compliance with tax rules. So even if there is less "paperwork" involved in dealings with CRA, if it is difficult to find answers to questions online, or difficult to get through on the telephone service, or difficult to go through the process of gaining all the relevant information for CRA and/or tax intermediaries, SMEs/intermediaries are not likely to change their overall impressions of CRA. These issues are no less relevant or important to perceptions of service efficiency, as they all contribute to overall efficiency.