By Linda Stuart
Following a Globe and Mail story published July 11 that was further reported on by online publication iPhone in Canada, Rogers has told Cartt that it has made changes to its “vendor mix” when it comes to outsourcing some of its customer service roles to third-party companies.
Rogers provided a statement July 17 to Cartt in response to questions about the Globe report that Rogers had ended its contract with Foundever, a Luxembourg-headquartered company that had reportedly been providing Canada-based customer service personnel for Rogers until recently.
“As customers increasingly use digital tools and self-services, we’ve made some changes to our vendor mix,” the Rogers statement said. “Similar to other providers, we continue to serve our customers across the country using our internal team and third-party partners. The majority of agents are based in Canada and there is no impact to our internal customer service team.”
The statement appears to be word for word the same as that provided to the Globe.
As was noted in the Globe article, Rogers made a commitment in April 2023, after its acquisition of Shaw, to have a 100-per-cent Canada-based customer service team, and it said at that time it planned to hire 1,000 additional customer service representatives across the country, as Cartt reported then.
Rogers’s stated commitment to 100-per-cent Canadian-based call centres actually predates the closing of the Shaw acquisition — in the fall of 2022, for example, the cable giant took out full-page ads in print publications such as the Toronto Star to tell its customers and Canadians in general that it was “the only provider with 100% Canadian-based call centres”, while it was awaiting regulatory approval for its purchase of Shaw.
Currently, as Rogers told Cartt last week, “the majority of agents are based in Canada.”
