Question Period Note: CALL CENTRE WAIT TIMES

Service Canada is working to improve access and reduce wait times for Canadians through continued investments in its call centre operations.

• Service Canada has made significant investments both in its EI Call Centre technology and in the number of call centre agents to serve Canadians during this difficult period.

• Service Canada has nearly tripled the number of specialized EI call centre agents, from 1,100 to 3,000. As a result, wait times have been cut by more than 80%, from a weekly average of 85 minutes in January 2021 to less than 15 minutes currently.

• This additional agent capacity is expected to continue to result in reduced wait times and make it easier for Canadians to speak to an agent.

• Through Budget 2016, the Government invested $73M over two years to increase from approximately 800 to 1100 agents to improve Employment Insurance (EI) Call Centre accessibility to reach an agent and to reduce call wait times. Through Budget 2018, the Government invested $127.7M to maintain this increased capacity for an additional three years.

• On top of the final year of the Budget 2018 investment ($29.5M), the Government invested an additional $420.0M over 2 years to increase EI Call Centre capacity to 3,000 agents in the first year and maintain that capacity in the second year to ensure that Canadians continue to have timely access to the benefits to which they are entitled.

• Migration of the Employer Contact Centre (ECC) to the Hosted Contact Centre Solution (HCCS) platform was completed on October 26, 2018; Pensions (CPP&OAS) call centres migrated on May 13, 2019; and EI call centres migrated on March 11, 2020.

• Migration of call centres to the HCCS platform have allowed us to increase our queue capacity so all clients can get through and wait to speak to an agent, including our most vulnerable clients.

• The Department has implemented the HCCS, a modern technology to deliver efficient and enhanced contact centre services to Canadians and support improved workload management.

• Additionally, on June 13, 2020, Service Canada further enhanced the CPP&OAS Interactive Voice Response to provide clients with the ability to authenticate using their Social Insurance Number and Date of Birth as well as the ability to access application status and payment information. This provides a better experience for clients by enabling more self-serve functions and allowing agents to focus their time on responding to client requests that require their specific guidance and advice.

• The Department has implemented the Hosted Contact Centre Solution (HCCS), a modern technology to deliver efficient and enhanced contact centre services to Canadians and support improved workload management.
o Migration of the Employer Contact Centre (ECC) to the HCCS platform was completed on October 26, 2018;
o Pensions (CPP&OAS) call centres migrated on May 13, 2019; and
o EI call centres migrated on March 11, 2020.
• From April 2020 to the end of March 2021, the number of agents onboarded has nearly tripled from 1,100 to 3,000.
• During the first week of March 2021, EI Call Centre agents answered 130,310 calls, which is 41,094 (46.1%) more than the 89,216 calls answered during the same week last year. This increase is a direct result of the significant investments in EI Call Centres. Canadians can expect shorter wait times to speak to an agent and quicker access to the information they need on the benefits to which they are entitled.
• Wait times have been cut by more than 80%, from an average 85 minutes in January 2021 to approximately 13 minutes for the week of March 22nd, 2021.
• For fiscal year 2020-21, EI Call Centre agents answered 5.6M calls compared to 4.4M calls in 2019-2020.