The Department’s Customer Charter (the Charter) covers four customer service areas: ‘ease of access’; ‘getting it right’; ‘keeping you informed’; and ‘right treatment’. The NAO found that it is difficult to assess the Department objectively against these areas because the Department has not identified a suite of performance measures, management information and benchmarks that it needs to assess whether it is providing a reasonable level of service.22 The Department told us that in its view, “there is actually quite a lot of evidence that suggests the service is getting better”, such as improved payment compliance and accuracy.23 However, there has been no noticeable improvement in how its customers perceive the Department’s performance in the four areas, and some aspects of customer service have declined. For example, the C&AG’s report shows that Charter scores based on customer survey responses relating to ‘ease of access’, ‘keeping you informed’ and ‘right treatment’ appear no better for the quarter ending December 2019 than they did for the quarter ending June 2017. In addition, the average amount of time taken to answer telephone calls increased substantially, from 26 seconds in the quarter ending June 2018, to 21 minutes in the quarter ending September 2021.24