Positive customer experience
One of our strategic goals is to build a positive customer experience in the management of tax matters. We base our operations on a genuine customer orientation, customer understanding and customer engagement. We want to make our customers’ tax transactions as simple and easy as possible. A positive customer experience also maintains and strengthens a positive attitude towards taxes.
The handprint of our operations described in this section has a particularly positive impact on achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 8. The global goal promotes sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for everyone. The Finnish Tax Administration promotes this goal by providing effective services for society, among other measures. We develop our service channels and use digitalisation. We invest in responsible and interactive high-quality communication.
Smooth services and fluent communication
A positive customer experience is created when customers can take care of their tax matters smoothly, are satisfied with the services and feel that they are being treated equally.
E-service
- There were more than 33.5 million logins to MyTax, and 5.5 million different reports and notifications were submitted through the service. We received 175,000 messages through MyTax (+18%). We responded to 71% of the messages within five working days.
- Changes to tax cards or prepayments were requested roughly 2.6 million times.
- Some 1.5 million individual taxpayers made changes to their pre-completed tax return, and 89% of the changes were made through MyTax.
- A total of 85% of the people who replied to the survey on how their visit to MyTax went stated that their experience was good.
- Roughly 31,000 employers used the Palkka.fi service each month. The service makes the payment of wages easier for small employers. The service was used to pay around €2.4 billion in wages and fees, as well as to submit some 1.4 million earnings payment reports and some 0.44 million separate reports to the Incomes Register.
Telephone service
- We answered around 1.8 million calls at a response rate of approximately 78. The number of incoming calls has decreased every year since 2019.
- The matter at hand was resolved or its processing was started in 93.8% of the calls.
- A total of 92% of callers were satisfied or extremely satisfied with the telephone service they received.
APIs
Our vision is that taxation will be a seamless part of the daily life of people and businesses in the future, as the information required for taxation will be generated automatically during each tax transaction. Application programming interfaces (APIs) are the key here, as they form a link between our systems and the financial management software used by companies or their accounting firms.
By the end of 2023, we offered more than 70 APIs for different purposes. These APIs were used a total of 251 million times, i.e. their use more than doubled from the previous year. The most popular API is the Withholding Percentage Request API through which the payer can retrieve the recipient’s withholding rate for the payment of wages, for example.
Communication
Communication helps build interaction with customers, lower the threshold in taking care of tax matters and encourage customers to take the correct steps at the correct time to ensure the tax revenue. Communication also has an impact on the increased use of MyTax and the e-service. Through communication, we increase our employees’ understanding and commitment to their work, as well as boost their sense of relevance.
We also aim for a positive customer experience through clear customer guidance that is kept up to date, as well as interaction on social media. In communication, we take into account the needs of different customer groups, providing information not only in Finnish and Swedish but also in English. Our internal and external communication channels include vero.fi, newsletters, online information, social media, media services and our interactive intranet.
The vero.fi website offers comprehensive guidance on taking care of your tax matters and using MyTax. The customer guidance is systematically developed with specialists.
In 2023, pages on vero.fi were loaded a total of 85.8 million times (2022: 88.5 million). Of this figure, Swedish pages were loaded 5.2 million and English pages 3.8 million times. During the year, the vero.fi website was the subject of several denial of service attacks. Operational reliability of the site was improved towards the end of the year.
We had nearly 265,000 followers on our social media channels (2022: 222,000). Content was displayed roughly 25 million times (2022: 19.4 million), and the number of different reactions was 1.3 million (2022: 1.3 million).
Our media service handled 376 media contacts (2022: 356). In the 2023 business communication survey by Taloustutkimus (Yritysviestintä23), our media service was given the score of 3.94/5 (2022: 3.65). Among public sector organisations, the best scores for communication were given to the Finnish Tax Administration and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Our social media recruitment communication won the Creative Ideas category of Magnet Awards Finland. The category focused on employer image campaigns and content that redefine traditional industry patterns.
Our customer communications focused on:
- Tax cards and keeping them up to date throughout the year
- Checking and completing your tax return
- Paying the correct amount of taxes at the right time
- Topical issues and legislative amendments due to issues such as the energy crisis, e.g. the tax credit for electricity
Survey highlights
77% of respondents agree with the statement “Guidance by the Finnish Tax Administration assists people in doing the right thing”.
66% of respondents completely or to some extent agree that the Finnish Tax Administration has considered its activities from the customers’ point of view.
81% of respondents completely or to some extent agree that it is easy to find instructions on how to report and pay taxes when you need it.
Source: The Finnish Tax Administration attitude survey 2023
Metrics and goals
We monitor our successes and develop our operations using the following metrics and goals:
| Metric | Actual 2020 | Actual 2021 | Actual 2022 | Goal 2023 | Actual 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Percentage of tax card changes made online (%) | 74 | 76 | 77 | ≥76 | 76 |
| Percentage of electronic income tax returns, individual taxpayers (%) | 86 | 88 | 89 | ≥ 88 | 91 |
| Smoothness of telephone service, response rate for tax card calls (%) | - | 77 | 75 | 75–80 | 76 |
| Smoothness of telephone service, response rate for non-tax card calls (%) | - | 81 | 82 | 78–82 | 79 |
| Percentage of customers satisfied with the telephone service, an SMS survey (%), individual taxpayers | - | 93 | 93 | ≥93 | 93 |
| Percentage of customers satisfied with the telephone service, an SMS survey (%), corporate taxpayers | - | 85 | 88 | ≥85 | 90 |
| Percentage of customers who feel they can trust the Finnish Tax Administration (%) 1) | - | 88 | 91 | ≥90 | 91 |
1) Customer attitude survey, October 2023 (n = 1,000). Since 2022, the survey has differed from previous surveys in that it uses a five-tier response scale including a neutral option (neither agree nor disagree), compared to a four-tier scale without any neutral option in the previous surveys. The actual figures have been converted into a statistically comparable format.
Case: Customer service model aims for a positive customer experience
Our strategic goal is to ensure that our customers have a positive customer experience in the management of tax matters. To achieve this goal, we have created a customer service model.
The customer service model specifies what a positive customer experience means in daily encounters and what it requires from us. The model applies to service through different channels: telephone, letters, messages on MyTax and face-to-face encounters.
When serving a customer, key aspects include the ability to listen to the customer and to ensure equality and understandability. The model starts with anticipation before the customer encounter and progresses to the customer’s positive experience after the tax matter has been dealt with.
We will adopt the common model in stages. Most of our employees working with taxation had completed the training on the model by the end of 2023. In future, we will train all new taxation employees in the use of the model.