AC students research call centre wait times for foreign workers
Posted on Friday, August 5th, 2022
A research study on improving the call answer rate of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Client Support Centre (CSC) will be presented by Interdisciplinary Studies in Human-Centred Design program students at next week’s RE/ACTION Showcase. With a current answer rate of seven per cent at IRCC call centers, the study focuses on improving service to clients and stakeholders.
Held virtually on Friday, Aug. 12, the RE/ACTION Showcase highlights leading-edge applied research, done in collaboration with industry, institutional and community partners, providing a glimpse into the future of technology and the current state of innovation. The goal of RE/ACTION is to create a platform for those students to showcase their hard work to an audience of peers, faculty and community partners.
“As a team we chose to focus on the experience of temporary foreign workers (TFW) when contacting the IRCC call centre, but the interesting point is that everybody, be it either TFW applicants, student permit applicants or permanent residence applicants, has shared the same experience,” said team leader Melis Burkay.
Burkay and her team — Michaela Trottier, Saideep Reddy and Abhisekh Ravlekar — are using human-centered design methods to propose solutions on improving call centre operations for TFWs and clients in general. To determine why applicants are contacting the IRCC call centre, the team worked on the secondary research by studying scholarly articles, social media posts of users and various immigration forums. The team then interviewed TFW applicants, immigration lawyers and consultants. Each week they consulted with IRCC subject matter experts (SME) to showcase their findings and receive feedback.
Along with the call centre, IRCC offers a webform for users to enquire about their application status.
“We started to find the reasons why applicants are calling IRCC. The first insight was that they wanted to know the status of their application and needed to make changes like adding a document or adding contact information,” said Reddy. “The second insight was that if the application processing was delayed, the applicants become anxious and contact IRCC via email, webform and phone call. But, when they submit a webform, they do not receive an acknowledgement or a response within specified processing times and instead receive generic.”
With these findings, the team captured common experiences by creating two personas: a TFW applicant who faces unemployment if his extension is not processed in time and an immigration lawyer who needs to update her client’s documentation with IRCC, but is unable to do so through the webform. Using these personas, the team developed sample journey maps to show the process of applicants contacting the IRCC call centre.
“There are three touch points before applicants contact IRCC,” said Burkay. “First, they apply for a permit or an extension. Second, they check their application status. Third, they are concerned about the processing time and try to find a solution by filling out the webform and calling IRCC. The problem the lawyer is facing is almost the same as the applicant. She needs to submit documentation on behalf of her client but there is an issue with the webform. She knows she probably won’t get through to the call centre and her client’s application is at risk of being rejected.”
The team is in the concluding project stages and will present prototypes of their solutions to the IRCC as well as interview the clients/applicants for feedback. Solutions include implementing a ticketing system for the webform and changing to the application portal to provide clients with reassurance, trust, transparency and timely communication from IRCC. Once the project is finalized, the team will submit it for the judges’ consideration at the RE/ACTION Showcase.
Click here to register for the virtual RE/ACTION Showcase on Aug. 12.