The department, which has previously outlined plans to update legacy services with a new system incorporating multiple channels, has now revealed further details of the projected spend and contract length
HM Revenue and Customs has revealed that a major new commercial engagement to replace ageing telephony services with a new multi-channel contact centre will be worth an estimated £600m to the chosen providers.
The tax agency first announced last year that it intended to implement a new long-term deal with a provider of contact centre as a service (CCaaS) platform. According to an updated planning notice, the department provided an update outlining progress made on “early engagement activities for the development of a single omnichannel CCaaS solution to replace its current legacy services”.
Following this market engagement, HMRC has provided some further outline details of the planned agreement, which is expected to run for an initial eight-year term, beginning in December 2025. A further two-year extension could take the contact’s ultimate end date to 2035.
Inclusive of VAT, the deal is expected to be worth £600m to the preferred suppliers. HMRC has previously indicated that prospective bidders must team up – with each CCaaS platform vendor working alongside a systems integrator – and make joint submissions.
The winning bidders will then provide the department with a range of products and services, covering the deployment and operation of a new contact centre.
The notice adds: “The CCaaS Programme aims to procure a solution encompassing: the provision of product licenses and future acquisition/development of associated add-on products; service design, implementation and configuration services; run and support services, including proactive maintenance and testing; [and] ongoing run and optimise services with an option for incentivised innovation and optimisation.”
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In its previous engagement notice, published late last year, the tax department revealed that it would only consider bids from the market’s bigger players, with vendors being required to provide financial documents demonstrating annual CCaaS revenues of at least £150m. Additionally, the HMRC contact centre engagement must represent no more than 10% of the supplier’s overall annual tally of CCaaS revenue.
Systems integrators, meanwhile, can only bid for the deal if their yearly sales exceed £80m. The HMRC contract should constitute a maximum of 15% of bidders’ overall top line, the department indicated.
The December 2024 notice also revealed that the contact centre will need to support up to 200,000 agents across the world and handle 20,000 inbound calls, 400 outbound calls, and 3,000 webchats at any given time – while maintaining a 99.99% uptime record.
HMRC also set out five core objectives it hopes to be achieved via the deployment of the new system: personalised and intuitive services for users; improved and more integrated tools for agents, including the provision of information in real time; greater insights from performance data; integration with other software systems, including core ERP and CRM back-office platforms; better overall service for customers, evidenced by reduced wait times and more issues being dealt with during a user’s initial call.
The newly published planning notice outlines that the document has been released “to allow for linking to future planned procurement and associated notices… does not constitute a further period of pre-market engagement and suppliers are asked to take no further action” for the time being.
In late 2022 HMRC launched a review of a contact centre system from Odigo that, in the weeks and months following its implementation, encountered “multiple service incidents”. Since then, there has been much scrutiny of HMRC’s own customer service performance, which has consistently fallen below targets.
