Sudden Drop in IRS Calls Answered Affecting enQ
July 8, 2022
The current IRS level of service has significantly dropped overnight - something that enQ hasn’t experienced in its 7 years of operation. I believe honesty and transparency are both fundamental when it comes to your trust and confidence in us, so I want to give you a clear explanation and the steps that we are taking.
1) Current Situation
Calls Answered by the IRS Have Been Halved: as of June 21, 2022. According to enQ’s data, the IRS without any prior notification, has throttled the number of calls it answers by an estimated 50% - a change made independent of and unrelated to enQ. We expect this dramatic decrease in service levels to last until the next tax season. enQ believes this throttling is caused by a reallocation of IRS resources to address the significant backlog of 30 million paper returns (as mandated by Congress).
2) Net Effect on enQ’s Service Levels
- With significantly fewer IRS calls being accepted, enQ level of service has declined to unacceptable levels.
- enQ hold times have risen.
3) What is enQ Doing Now?
enQ’s highest commitment is to deliver world-class service to our subscribers, and to continue to reduce their IRS call hold times by as much as 90%.
enQ has invested significant monies in its software intelligence and infrastructure during the pandemic such that enQ was entirely re-designed with a ten-fold increase in servers. We also added world-class machine learning PhDs to our team. We made these investments to ensure our ability to continue delivering service excellence to our clients.
Please bear with us as we are still working on a range of solutions.
4) About enQ
enQ was created to facilitate up to 90% faster connection rates to the IRS while saving our clients hours of hold time. These hold time reductions can save tax professionals significant monies per IRS call made.
enQ Addresses an Important Need: This need is best illustrated by the following: in 2018, the IRS calls placed to calls accepted percentage was 31.7%. It declined in 2019 to 24.8%, in 2020 to 20.9%, and in 2021 to a record low of 9%.
Additionally, according to Senator Lankford at a 2.17.2022 hearing on IRS service levels, Lankford indicated (1:24:28) calls to the IRS were met with a 53% rate of immediate disconnects. Jan Lewis of the American Institute of CPAs additionally explained (1:57:38) that it takes 22-24 attempted calls to the IRS to finally enter the queue and eventually speak to an agent.
Why enQ: enQ’s proprietary technologies have served to short-cut these issues, saving our clients time and frustration while reducing staff hours and the payroll costs associated with navigating the above.
On behalf of the founder of enQ, we thank you for your ongoing understanding and support.
