As part of our digital-first strategy, we strive to improve ease of access for our customers and to make our services user-friendly and technologically innovative.
Whether our customers are looking for general guidance, using our calculators, applying for a grant, lodging a return, paying assessments, or searching for unclaimed money, we want to make it easy for them to find what they need.
This approach also applies to our staff connectivity, and meant we were well-prepared to pivot to hybrid working and to keep meeting customer service needs during the pandemic.
Throughout 2020–21 we have continued enhancing and refining our digital systems to deliver accessible, user-friendly customer systems and increased efficiencies across our work.
Digital innovation
We have delivered significant updates to our flagship applications this year, including:
- Duties Online: We now manage 99.96% of complex lodgements through this system.
- My Land Tax: System enhancements implemented coronavirus tax relief measures, and the system now supports more than 500,000 users.
- AutoPay: Our customers use AutoPay for 93% of all types of payment arrangements we offer.
Website performance
Our website is the primary source of information for the services we administer and the gateway to digital applications including Duties Online, My Land Tax, Payroll Tax Express, calculators and SmartForms.
Engagement with our website and online applications continues to increase each year:
- Page views — 50.6 million, up 8.6% from 46.6 million in 2019–20.
- Visitor sessions — 9.9 million, up 20.7% from 8.2 million in 2019–20.
Our website hosts a range of self-assessment tools including calculators to assist customers with estimating concessions, duties and taxes, and decision tools that determine eligibility for grants, duties and registrations. In 2020–21:
- Applications accounted for 71% of all online page views, 74% of which were related to Duties Online.
- Calculators received more than 2 million visits — the stamp duty calculator was the most visited.
- There were more than 200,000 visits to our decision tools, the most popular topic being Will I be eligible for the First Home Owner Grant?
- My Land Tax received more than 2.9 million page views.
Measuring and improving our online services
Our business decisions are supported by real-time reporting data and analytical tools.
Web analytics data is collected across our online systems and customer feedback is collected through our website through pop-up website surveys and on-page feedback questions. We use this data to improve the content and functionality of our digital products and online services.
We also work closely with customers and industry stakeholders to co-design and test our systems to ensure these are easy to use and meet expectations.
Online payments
We continue to increase access to online payment options and customers are adopting these more and more each year. In 2020—21 we received 61% fewer cheques (4,063), representing a continued downward trend with a 79% reduction in cheques in 2019–20 and a 68% reduction in 2018–19.
Other online channels
We engage customers via a number of other online channels including:
- Email newsletters to 133,000 subscribers.
- LinkedIn updates to more than 1800 followers.
- Targeted email campaigns sent to our customers and other stakeholders.
