TORONTO – Last week Rogers Communications announced all of its customer service team members, across all of its brands, are now based in Canada.
This month, the company completed the transition of 150 remaining customer service positions to Canada, with new jobs created with partners across Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, says the company press release. This follows the company’s announcement earlier this month that it is hiring for 350 jobs at its new customer solutions centre in Kelowna, B.C.
With its entire 7,000-strong customer service team now based in Canada, “this milestone ensures that every phone call or online chat with Rogers, Fido or chatr is answered by a customer solution specialist on Canadian soil,” reads the release.
“When our customers choose to call us for help with more complex issues, they’ll be served by our Canadian-based team members who are truly experts in our products and services – and as members of their communities, they can relate to the needs of our customers,” said Eric Agius, chief customer officer.
This investment is part of the company’s multi-year program to improve customer experience to better serve its customers. Thanks to its Canadian-based operations Rogers says it was able to quickly pivot and shift its call centre agents to work from home, keeping customers connected and teams safe during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Unifor used the release to ramp up its demands for Bell Canada to bring all offshore customer service work back to Canada permanently. The union represents over 5,000 Bell workers. “Unifor commends Rogers’ decision yesterday to bring all remaining customer service jobs back to Canada, and set a path that others should follow,” reads its statement
“Yesterday’s announcement by Rogers along with our experience with Bell during the past several months has shown that Canada’s telecom workers are able not only to step in and do the work, but can provide better and more reliable service to customers in Canada,” said Jerry Dias, Unifor national president, in the union’s Canada Day release. “This crisis has caused many Canadians to rethink their priorities, and I urge Bell Canada leadership to do the same today. Bring the work home and help rebuild our economy that better supports workers in Canada.”
At Bell, work was brought home on a temporary basis during the pandemic because call centres in the Philippines, India, and Tunisia were forced to close, so workers in Canada had to pick up that slack, said the Unifor release.
The union lays out all of its problems with Bell Canada here.
We’ve asked Bell for a response to the union demand and will update this story when we receive a response.
