Call Centres

Opening Statement to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts

Call Centres

(Report 1—2019 Spring Reports of the Auditor General of Canada)

30 May 2019

Sylvain Ricard, Chartered Professional AccountantCPA, Chartered AccountantCA
Interim Auditor General of Canada

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to present the results of our recent audit report on call centres. Joining me today is Jean Goulet, the Principal who was responsible for the audit.

In this audit, we looked at the call centres of three departments: Employment and Social Development Canada; Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada; and Veterans Affairs Canada. We also looked at whether the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat included call centres within the Government of Canada’s service strategy and whether Shared Services Canada provided support to modernize call centres.

This audit is important because call centres are a key source of government information. This is especially true for people who are visually impaired, have intellectual or physical disabilities, do not have a computer or Internet access or the skills to use these technologies, or live in rural or remote regions and do not have high-speed Internet access or cannot easily get to a government office.

Canadians make millions of calls to the government every year to get the information they need to make time-sensitive, important decisions. For example, they may be calling to ensure that they receive benefits on time or to find out about the status of an application.

Overall, we found that getting through to government call centres took time and persistence. In fact, we found that half of the 16 million Canadians who tried to speak with an agent could not do so. Seven million callers were redirected to an automated system, were told to visit the website, or were disconnected. In addition, more than a million callers gave up waiting and hung up. And callers who did manage to get through to an agent sometimes had to wait up to a half an hour or longer.

We also found that service decisions were not driven by callers’ needs. For example, departments did not offer callers the option of staying on the line or of getting called back when an agent became available.

The way in which call centres set service standards was not relevant to Canadians, transparent, or consistent. None of the call centres we audited had service standards on clients’ likelihood of reaching an agent or on the accuracy of the answers they provide callers. And the call centre for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not have a standard on how long callers would have to wait to speak with an agent once they are in the queue. Without service standards, callers cannot know what level of service they can expect from call centres.

And the situation is unlikely to improve in the near future. The government’s Clients First Service Strategy does not include call centres, though more than 25% of Canadians use the telephone to connect with the government. In addition, after 5 years of a call centre modernization project, Shared Services Canada has managed to upgrade only 8 of 221 call centres, and it has no plan for the remaining 213.

We made 5 recommendations. All organizations have agreed with all of them and have shared their action plans with us.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the Committee may have. Thank you.