A Consumer NZ recent investigation found that Immigration NZ is frustratingly hard to contact by phone, with some callers being stuck on hold for two and a half hours.
The consumer watchdog has investigated which government agencies keep people waiting for support via their contact centres for the longest.
The investigation focused on 16 government agencies, with all calls made on a weekday between 9 am and 5 pm.
The result indicated that some departments, such as Inland Revenue, Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT NZ) and NZ Customs Service, picked up the phone in less than two minutes. At the other end of the spectrum, Immigration NZ was frustratingly hard to contact, and Work and Income kept Consumer's caller waiting for over 90 minutes.
The investigation also found that government agencies’ wait times were twice as long as businesses.
The average wait time for government agencies was about 25 minutes. This is double the average wait time we experienced when we called the businesses,” said Consumer NZ’s head of content, Caitlin Cherry.
According to Cherry, Immigration NZ was the hardest agency to contact, as it took Consumer NZ four attempts to get through to someone.
Revealing their experience with calling INZ, Cherry said, “We had four attempts to contact them. Firstly, we had the wrong number for calls from a mobile phone. On our second attempt, our call dropped out after about an hour and a half on hold. On our third attempt, the call centre was not accepting calls. Finally, after a fourth attempt and another hour and 10 minutes on hold, we got through to an operator. The total hold time for Immigration NZ was more than two and a half hours.
Indian Weekender got in touch with Immigration NZ to know their take on the same and what measures they are taking to tackle the issue of people having to wait for a long while on calls with them.
INZ’s General Manager Engagement and Experience, Suzanne Boslem, said, “There has been an unprecedented number of phone calls and emails to the Immigration Contact Centre as a result of Reconnecting NZ and the demand for information on the status of visa applications. The calls have been more complex meaning they have been taking longer to answer.”
Boslem also further revealed that to meet this demand, INZ has recruited additional people into the service centre, which has significantly improved their service in recent weeks. “We have also extended our opening hours from 8 am to 10 pm to 6 am to 12 am to meet demand better. We have gone from an average wait time of 90 minutes to 30 minutes across all of our lines. Callers phoning priority lines have less time to wait – so calls from NZ businesses about the Accredited Employer Work Visa are 1 minute and calls from Licenced Immigration Advisors are 11 minutes. We encourage people to check the Immigration website please first to see if they can find an answer to their query,” Boslem signed off.
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