OTHER NEWS - April 20, 1995

IRS Phone Service Still Lags, GAO Says: Despite improved productivity, the Internal Revenue Service still lags far behind private companies in the quality of its telephone assistance, a congressional report says. “IRS has fallen behind . . . primarily because IRS senior management has not aggressively and consistently pursued the implementation of commonly used practices,” the General Accounting Office said. Between 1989 and 1994, the number of callers receiving a busy signal or hanging up while on hold rose sharply, and the proportion of calls answered fell from half to slightly less than a quarter, said the GAO, Congress’ investigative arm. In the face of staff cuts, the IRS has managed through increased productivity to answer about the same number of calls each year--36 million--through the five-year period. But the number of calls has skyrocketed, from 73 million in 1989 to 156 million last year.