These are some examples of how the Swedish Tax Agency let taxpayer’s perspective influence performance.
• Instead of using traditional indicators and goals for response times as ‘answer within X minutes’ we use ‘answer within reasonable time’. Reasonable time varies for taxpayers and we try to allocate resources to meet and foresee taxpayer’s needs from taxpayer’s perspective. We also believe there is a risk of disappointment in targeting a fixed time. Even though the purpose of aiming at response time is an important indicator and a way to build trust, the result may turn out to be the opposite.
• We use knowledge and insights from polls and studies as a base for performance indicators in the organisation. Helpful attitude, respectful treatment and the use of plain language in communication are, among other indicators, used to determine performance of our co-workers.
• Conversations with taxpayers over the telephone are sometimes monitored by an internal coach or manager to provide feedback and improve the co-workers performance i.e. taxpayers with different emotions in a helpful and professional way and to determine the ability to give relevant information to the taxpayer based on the taxpayers needs and situation. In the same way, the written language in different types of tasks are regularly reviewed through quality monitoring. We have learned that the improvement of language in terms of talking and writing in a clear and understandable way is an important factor in the perceived treatment and by that also an essential key to trust.
• Over the years we have changed our goals and objectives so that they support the actual purpose of our activities. Going back twenty years our objectives, to a large extent, were focused on how many enforcement activities we could do and how much money we could collect. As we moved our strategy from a focus on deterrence to a larger focus on how to strengthen voluntary compliance, we realised that we also had to change our goals, objectives and what we measure. As an example, uncertainty about the outcome of a task is something that many taxpayers see as disturbing. We realised that this could affect trust and as an extension voluntary compliance. Consequently, we started to monitor throughput time for several important types of tasks. This showed our staff that time and transparency about our work is important for our overall purpose. This had a great impact on prioritising throughout the organisation and changed behaviour amongst the staff.
Trust & Compliance
