The federal government has earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars to improve customer service at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) — but people who regularly deal with the country’s tax collector say it hasn’t had much of an effect, with telephone wait times sometimes clocking in at more than two hours.
There’s been a spike in the number of irate callers lashing out at agents after experiencing long periods on hold, the union told CBC News.
The CRA website recently suggested the wait time for a lunch-hour call to the agency to discuss a personal tax matter would be approximately eight minutes.
The money was meant to support the CRA’s service standard of answering 65 per cent of calls within 15 minutes or less of a caller opting to speak with an agent.
In a media statement, a spokesperson for the CRA said the agency is “dedicated to providing quality and timely service to Canadians, including in our phone contact centres.”
As for the layoffs, the spokesperson said the CRA “hired a significant number of temporary contact centre agents” during the pandemic to administer special programs such as supports for businesses.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The federal government has earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars to improve customer service at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) — but people who regularly deal with the country’s tax collector say it hasn’t had much of an effect, with telephone wait times sometimes clocking in at more than two hours.
There’s been a spike in the number of irate callers lashing out at agents after experiencing long periods on hold, the union told CBC News.
The CRA website recently suggested the wait time for a lunch-hour call to the agency to discuss a personal tax matter would be approximately eight minutes.
The money was meant to support the CRA’s service standard of answering 65 per cent of calls within 15 minutes or less of a caller opting to speak with an agent.
In a media statement, a spokesperson for the CRA said the agency is “dedicated to providing quality and timely service to Canadians, including in our phone contact centres.”
As for the layoffs, the spokesperson said the CRA “hired a significant number of temporary contact centre agents” during the pandemic to administer special programs such as supports for businesses.
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