Customer service issues are getting worse at Canadian telecom companies, with 2025 seeing record complaints for the third year in a row. Something must be done, and other countries might have the answer.
For example, Spain passed a law in December introducing new customer service standards for telecoms and other large companies with more than 250 employees. The rules say that customers’ calls need to be answered within three minutes, 95 per cent of the time.
Compare that to Canada, where people can often wait on hold for hours just to have their call dropped or to have service reps attempt to upsell them.
CBC Marketplace spoke with dozens of customers who are frustrated with the poor customer service they’ve received from Rogers, Telus, and Bell. These complaints include long hold times, multiple transfers, escalations, dropped calls and poor communication, which can cause issues to take days or weeks to fix.
Additionally, Marketplace also learned that customer service representatives at Telus are monitored on the number of credits they issue; credits of a certain level need to be approved by a manager and service representatives’ score cards are negatively affected if they lower a customer’s bill. A Telus technician also told the publication that they have high sales targets to meet and are expected to upsell customers when they get to their home to install or fix equipment.
In Canada, while we’ve had issues with dropped calls and long wait times, there isn’t a set standard of customer service for telecoms. “It’s clear that customer frustration exists,” said Josée Bidal Thibault, commissioner and CEO of the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Services (CCTS), to Marketplace. “There is an opportunity to do better.”
However, there is no word on whether Canada will consider setting the same customer service standard that Spain has. In Spain, under its new law, all customer complaints have to be resolved in 15 days or five days if they involve improper charges, and companies could be fined up to €100,000 (about C$158,440) if they fail to do so.
The CCTS released its annual review in January, reporting more than 23,600 complaints across wireless, internet, TV, and phone, which is a 17 per cent increase from the previous year. Rogers saw the biggest share of complaints among all national groups, with 6,485 accepted complaints. This was a 15 per cent increase compared to the previous year. Telus received 4,904 complaints, which is a 78 per cent increase from the previous year. Lastly, Bell saw 3,966 complaints, a 16 per cent increase from the last year. Breach of contract issues were the biggest part of customer complaints from all three companies.
Moreover, we’ve seen more complaints about customer service issues as telecoms have laid off employees and outsourced customer service roles. Last year, MobileSyrup reported on layoffs that impacted call centre employees who took calls for Rogers, and we’ve also seen layoffs from Bell and Telus recently offered buyouts to hundreds of employees.
In February, an alliance of Canadian telecom workers denounced the industry’s rampant job outsourcing, warning of national security concerns.
Source: CBC Marketplace
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