HMRC bets up to £2.4B on Salesforce for taxpayer CRM overhaul

The UK tax authority, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), has secured a contract potentially worth up to £2.4 billion, including VAT, with Salesforce for an extensive overhaul of its customer relationship management (CRM) system. This deal, running until September 2036, could be extended for up to five additional years, making the total term as long as 2041.

The contract includes not only the CRM software, but also related services such as customer and case management, marketing campaigns, messaging, reporting, analytics, and artificial intelligence capabilities. Salesforce outbid Pegasystems, known as Pega, whose platform also integrates low-code development, automation, and AI. The new CRM platform is designed to integrate seamlessly with HMRC's future Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) system, thereby enhancing interactions with taxpayers, streamlining services, and reducing administrative burdens.

This contract is part of a wider transformation of HMRC's customer-facing technology. In April 2025, HMRC awarded Capgemini a contract worth up to £600 million, including VAT, for a contact-center-as-a-service system that is also intended to work in tandem with the new CRM platform. The overhaul is a response to years of criticism over HMRC's customer service.

In April 2025, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) accused HMRC of deliberately undermining its telephone service to steer taxpayers towards online channels. The committee's report found that the quality of phone service had hit an all-time low in 2023-24, with almost 44,000 callers disconnected during the first 11 months of that financial year due to overwhelming call volumes.

Only two-thirds of calls were answered, with an average wait time exceeding 23 minutes. A previous National Audit Office report had highlighted that callers had collectively spent 798 years on hold during 2022-23.