CRA still missing targets for call wait times, despite $400-million boost in funding

A run-in with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) can be taxing in the best circumstances, but the real test of a Canadian’s patience could come during the wait to speak with an agent on the phone.

As of the end of July, the CRA’s call centres were hitting their target of getting to a caller within 15 minutes or less only 31 per cent of the time, the agency told CTVNews.ca. This is compared to a service standard goal of 65 per cent of calls.

In fact, the average wait time to reach an agent on the phone so far this year is 24 minutes, although Canadians routinely complain of waiting for more than an hour to sort out their taxation and benefit problems over the phone.

It’s an issue taxpayers’ ombudsperson François Boileau follows closely, since his office is where Canadian taxpayers send their complaints regarding CRA service.

“It’s an ongoing issue every single year,” Boileau told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Thursday. “When someone calls in and they have to wait two, three, four hours and then just be disconnected – because that happens a lot – or they’re being told that the queues are full and so that creates frustrations. It’s not appropriate.”

Indeed, the issue has been going on for at least seven years now. A federal audit conducted for the year between March 2016 and March 2017 found that call centre agents answered the phone only about one-third of the time.

The federal government is also aware of the problem, and allocated $400 million in the 2022 fall economic statement for the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 fiscal years, in order to “support the service standard of answering 65% of calls within 15 minutes or less of a caller opting to speak with an agent.”

When asked why the agency is missing its service standard targets, Gillian Pranke, assistant commissioner responsible for the CRA’s contact centres, said the agency’s phone lines have been under pressure lately due, in part, to the rollout of new benefits.

For example, the second rollout period for the new Canada Dental Benefit began on July 1, the day after the first period ended.

“We have seen an increased number of calls in relation to benefits that we have been rolling out to support Canadians and this has created some pressures on the system,” Pranke told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Thursday.

“In fact, call volume has increased by more than 30 per cent compared to this same time last year.”

In addition to an increase in call volume, Pranke said calls now last longer than they used to, with agents spending “almost double” the length of time on each call than they did prior to 2020. She attributed this to a rise in complex calls related to pandemic benefits, as well as an increasingly time-consuming caller authentication process.

Marc Brière, national president of the Union of Taxation Employees (UTE), believes the CRA’s call centre problems are related to understaffing, especially after the agency chose to end or not renew the contracts of 1,800 term employees last May and June.

“I’m not surprised at all by this news,” Brière wrote in an emailed statement to CTVNews.ca. “In fact, our members working in the agency’s call centres have been telling us for several weeks that they are overwhelmed and on the verge of exhaustion because they are being asked to work so much overtime.”

Brière said the agency recently brought back 160 employees whose contracts ended in the spring, but that call centre staffing levels still fail to meet the current call volumes.

“Given the circumstances, the UTE is demanding that the CRA hires more employees to improve its customer service. It’s the only logical thing to do to meet the demand and give call centre employees some breathing space.”

Boileau would not comment on staffing levels at the CRA’s call centres, but said he did make several recommendations regarding customer service in his 2020-2021 Annual Report.

One of those recommendations was for the agency to offer a callback feature through the website. The CRA currently offers a callback feature that it activates only when call volumes reach a certain threshold, and in order to set up a callback, taxpayers need to call the CRA first. Boileau said his office is due to receive the agency’s plan concerning that recommendation in the coming weeks.

Recently, Boileau’s office also inquired with the CRA about a discrepancy between wait times listed on the agency’s website and the actual wait times callers experienced.

He said his office tested a service on the CRA website which tells taxpayers how long they can expect to wait on hold before reaching an agent on the phone and found that the actual wait time was significantly longer than the website stated.

“We checked ourselves, so it was quite clear that there was a discrepancy between when you check on the website…and then when you call. It’s not the same time.”

Pranke said her office has since investigated the discrepancy and determined that it was caused by an anomaly in the call queuing system. She said the call times listed on the website are accurate, but that some calls to the agency were being routed to a call queue that was reserved for training new employees, and which was not always staffed.

“It wasn’t clear that it wasn’t being serviced, so (that’s) clearly not ideal,” she said, adding that the queue has since been closed.

In spite of their limitations, Pranke said the wait time feature and the automated callback service are two of several approaches the agency is trying in an attempt to reduce call wait times.

“We’ve taken many steps over the years to reduce those wait times, which include increasing service hours, launching an automated callback feature and enhancing our secure online self-service options on CRA’s My Account,” she said.

“We’ve been working for a number of years now, really diligently working, to improve the experience of citizens.”

Edited by CTVNews.ca producer Phil Hahn