The IRS aims to use artificial intelligence to accelerate onboarding of new and temporarily relocated employees.
The IRS spends about 14 weeks training new customer service representatives. But Taxpayer Services Secretary Ken Corbin said at an industry conference last month that the agency’s training materials had not been updated to reflect new employees’ familiarity with digital tools.
“They learn differently, so using AI as an assistant to take some of that away and simplify the code as you go, will result in faster training and a better experience,” Corbin said April 8 at a conference hosted by ACT-IAC and Doris Consulting International.
Corbin told Federal News Network on the sidelines of the meeting that the plan to use AI to accelerate training is still a proof of concept and has not yet been implemented.
“We’re hopeful that in 2027 we’ll have a more efficient, better-trained workforce. This is one of the things that we’re doing behind the scenes that we think will be very successful,” Corbin said.
In February, the IRS reassigned approximately 1,500 IT and human resources employees to its Taxpayer Services division on a 120-day detail. The agency lost 27% of its workforce last year, primarily through voluntary retirement incentives and early retirement offers. The recruitment target for the application season was also not achieved.
Federal News Network reported last Friday that the IRS would extend most of the details for another 120 days. Many IRS employees have completed month-long training on this detail, but some classes are still in training.
“They’re in the field right now,” Corbin said of temporarily reassigned IRS employees.
Corbin said the IRS has also introduced new employee management tools to reduce the amount of time employees wait to assist taxpayers by phone.
“This filing season, we’ve been able to manage our workforce more effectively, especially between calls and other workstreams. I talked about balance: balance of calls and balance of paperwork. We’re integrating technology to drive efficiencies while serving our customers no matter which channel they come in,” Corbin said.
Ahead of this year’s filing season, the IRS lowered the target service level for phones from 85% to 70%. The National Taxpayer Advocate said that in past years when the IRS set higher benchmarks, call centers were “significantly overstaffed,” with employees spending up to a third of their time “just waiting for the phone to ring.”
IRS CEO Frank Bisignano told lawmakers last month that the IRS has reduced call center “idle time” by nearly 50% during this year’s filing season. Bisignano and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the IRS was able to successfully complete the filing season despite significant staff reductions due to increased use of AI and automated tools.
In a keynote interview at the conference, Corbyn said Bisignano brings a “CEO mindset” to the company and helps leaders “ask the tough questions.”
“That CEO mindset really helps us accelerate, think through and tackle some of the tougher challenges we face head-on, but also really explore and celebrate what we’re accomplishing and really talk more about what we’re doing,” he said.
Corbin added that Bisignano is “a champion of the customer experience for taxpayers and is very thoughtful about how we balance that experience.”
Before the filing season began, Bisignano told employees in a memo that the IRS would retire the telephone service metric that it has used for 20 years and replace it with a new metric that more accurately reflects the public’s interactions with tax officials.
“As we always say, what you measure matters. In our agency, we reach out to reps, we do web chats, we make phone calls, we do paper communications. They have three or four different tasks or work streams that need to be done. So if you only measure calls, all the other work streams are affected or don’t get the kind of attention they need,” Corbin said. “What we’re more focused on is not just measuring one thing, but measuring everything that a position or service channels at once: seeing it online, seeing it in person, seeing it on the phone, seeing it on web chat. It’s looking at all of those different components holistically.”
Corbin said the IRS’ customer service metrics should reflect other workflows beyond phone calls, and the IRS needs to balance its workforce across several public operations.
“If you’re late in processing a return or amended return, you’re going to get a lot of calls. So if you just focus on calls and don’t look at other areas, you’re actually increasing traffic in one of your service channels.”
Even as the IRS ramps up its use of automation, “there will always be humans involved” when it comes to contact centers, Corbin said.
“For me, a contact center is not about waiting for the customer to contact me. It’s about what kind of connections do you build before the customer needs to contact you? And once you get into the tier of ‘I have that relationship and I’ve made that connection,’ how do you integrate technology and humans?” he said.
The House passed a bill last week that would require the IRS to publish metrics on call volume, wait times and other key taxpayer service metrics.
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