Experiment: Channel shifting: Changing the default communication channel offered to clients to contact the department

Research Question:

Can we shift clients to submit an enquiry to the department using the online form by no longer presenting the phone as the default communication option?

Project Summary:

The Immigration, Refugees, and Citzenship Canada (IRCC) Client Support Centre (CSC) receives client enquiries submitted via the phone channel or via the online form. As phone answer rates remain suboptimal, there was interest in experimenting with ways to encourage clients to submit an enquiry via the online form. To avoid priming clients to think about phoning the CSC, we changed the name of the relevant weblink from "Call us" to “Contact the Client Support Center”. The “Contact the Client Support Centre” link increased the number of click throughs to the online form comparatively to the "Call us" link. The proportion of users who clicked to the online form was roughly 5 percentage points higher after the switch to the more general “Contact the Client Support Centre.” In other words, by not presenting the phone as the default option, we witnessed a 56% relative increase in click-throughs to the online form.

Design Details:

We used a pre-post study design. The two week pre-study period provided baseline data on clients’ URL clicking behaviours when exposed to the ‘Call us’ link. The two week post study period provided data on clients’ URL clicking behaviours when exposed to the ‘Contact the Client Support Centre’ link name.

Intervention:

The name of a web link on the contact us webpage of the department was changed from ‘Call us’ to ‘Contact the Client Support Centre'.

Outcomes:

The data collected for the pre- and post-study periods were: • Number of page views for the page on which the link changed was displayed • Number of click throughs to the online form

Findings:

Not presenting the phone as the default option led to a 4.9 percentage point increase (a relative increase of 56%) in click-through traffic towards the online form.

Design:

Structured pre-post

Experimentation Area:

Service Delivery

Experiment Status:

Completed

Last Updated:

Oct 16, 2020

Local Branch and/or Unit:

Client Experience Branch

Reference No.:

IRCC-2019-CSC-00001

Organization:

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada