Rogers cutting telco customer service jobs amid complaints of long wait times

Rogers cutting telco customer service jobs amid complaints of long wait times

Rogers says 'small percentage' of front-line workers are being terminated, but won't confirm how many

A Winnipeg man says he's in disbelief that Rogers is laying off front-line customer service agents — after he spent almost three hours last month trying to reach a human to discuss his cellphone contract.

"It's really upsetting," said Jeremy Dias. "If Rogers is terminating the employment of even one employee on the front line, it means that those wait times are going to get even more unacceptable."

But as Rogers confirmed media reports it was cutting 230 job in sports and media last week, the company was also quietly laying off front-line customer service representatives, Go Public has learned.

Rogers has not responded to requests this week to confirm how many jobs have been cut. However, spokesperson Zac Carreiro told Go Public last week that the cuts represent a "small percentage of our workforce, including corporate and frontline roles.”

"We're investing in digital tools and self-serve to help our customers faster as their desire to self-serve grows," Carreiro wrote in an email at the time. "Like our peers, we continue to use a mix of in-house and third-party vendors."

When asked about the long wait times reported by Dias, Carreiro said Thursday that Rogers is "continuously working to improve our customer service and the experience we deliver."

A union organizer who has been contacted by laid off, non-unionized Rogers workers said possibly hundreds of people are being terminated.

Rogers money should stay local: union organizer

"Rogers is earning money from Canadians — including Canadian taxpayers and businesses — yet is not keeping that money in the communities," said Corey Mandryk, lead organizer with United Steelworkers Local 1944, which represents thousands of telecommunications workers across Canada.

"They have a responsibility to be a good employer."

Mandryk says laid off employees have told him that jobs are moving to an overseas call centre in Morocco — a claim Carreiro would not confirm.

When Rogers merged with Shaw Communications in 2023, the company promised to move overseas jobs back to Canada to provide "100 per cent Canadian-based customer service."

Rogers clients complain of customer service nightmare, spending hours on hold to resolve simple issues

People claiming to be Rogers customer service employees said on Reddit that dozens of workers in what's called "tier 1" support — the first point of human contact for customers — were being terminated. Some echoed what Mandryk has been told, that Rogers is training workers in Morocco to replace them.

CBC News could not confirm that the people posting on Reddit work for Rogers because all said they were too nervous and didn't want to risk their severance packages by speaking with the media — those severance packages, they say, come with non-disclosure agreements.

Customer decries state of telco service in Canada

The Reddit users said they were called into meetings last week and told they were being terminated. They said they were instructed to shut down their Rogers computers and return their equipment.

A Toronto employment lawyer told Go Public his firm has received dozens of calls from affected employees who work in customer service, tech support and sales departments.

"It's disheartening, given Canada's already troubling economic circumstances, that Rogers is choosing to let go of all these people," said Thomas Benstead.

The cuts come on the heels of customer service layoffs announced earlier this year by Telus, and similar cuts announced by Bell in June.

Meanwhile, Dias says he intends to file a small claims case over his contract dispute, because he's not getting anywhere using Rogers' customer service channels.

"We're in a jobs crisis in our country right now," said Dias. "A company that's making profit is not spending that money — that profit — in our country on good jobs."

Rogers cuts 230 jobs, closes radio stations in Vancouver, Calgary, Halifax and Kitchener

He says he's frustrated by what he calls a general decline in telco customer service in Canada, citing stronger regulations in Europe, where customers can more easily cancel contracts. Spain has mandated that 95 per cent of customer service calls be answered within three minutes.

"It feels like the telecom giants have realized the government won't stop them," said Dias.

"So they are actively breaking the traditional customer service model, because they know we have nowhere else to go."

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Ana Komenic is a producer with the CBC's Go Public unit.