GSTN Helpdesk handles over 56,000 taxpayer issues in one month of lockdown

GST Network Helpdesk on Sunday said it has handled over 56,000 taxpayer issues in one month since the nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 25.

According to data from GSTN, over 19,552 tickets raised by taxpayers were resolved between March 25 and April 24. The highest number of tickets handled in a day was 2,766 and the highest number of calls handled was 1,776.

"However, due to the lockdown, there is a steep dip experienced in the call and ticket volume trend at GST helpdesk. The total received transactions (inflow of calls and GRP tickets) are approximately 20 per cent of the usual volume trend," GSTN said.

Before the lockdown, on an average, GST helpdesk would receive around 8,000 to 10,000 calls every day, while around 2,000 tickets were raised on the GRP portal on a daily basis.

The GST Helpdesk, whose 65 per cent of staff worked from home, was fully operational through its toll-free number from 9 am to 9 pm serving in12 languages, it added.

GSTN CEO Prakash Kumar said help desk agents had to work from home, calls had to be routed to them at their phone and this was done in a secured manner.

"This was not a small job, but necessity made GSTN and its tech partner Tech Mahindra to do this. Today, a good number of associates are providing helpdesk support to GST stakeholders. We would continue to work ensuring 360-degree safety of people and process to combat the situation," Kumar added.

Out of the 12 languages, the Hindi Helpdesk services received the highest number of calls comprising61.66 per cent of the total call volume, followed by English language with14.80 per cent volume. Marathi at 4.75 per cent received the third-highest number of calls, closely followed by Gujarati 3.65 per cent, Telugu 3 per cent, Bengali 2.93 per cent and Tamil 2.86 per cent. The other languages are Kannada, Punjabi, Oriya, Malayalam and Assamese which registered lesser call volume respectively.