Working with Customers
Annual Report
August 1, 2021 – July 31, 2022
Customers often come to us frustrated, discouraged or intimidated, most of them looking for guidance. Our primary goal at the CCTS is to listen, understand and make sure consumers are treated fairly. It’s our role to walk them through our process and educate them by offering easy-to-digest information and facilitating a fair outcome. This section discusses our activities and results in 2021-22.
“I'm very grateful that the CCTS is there for the consumers to help resolve the complaints among all those confusing service providers.”
Listening to customers
We regularly survey customers who use our service to get their impressions of the work we do, refocus our efforts for improvement and attempt to measure the success of the public awareness initiatives we require Participating Service Providers (PSPs) to implement.
This year, we received over 3,000 responses from our customers and are proud to say that the results show overwhelmingly high customer satisfaction levels with the service our staff provides. We are pleased to see that we continue to meet our objective of offering a great service to Canadians year over year.
Numbers may be rounded.
What customers said about the CCTS
We asked our customers for the following information:
Is it important to have an independent organization to deal with telecom and TV complaints that has the authority to provide customers with compensation?
Was it easy to file your complaint with the CCTS?
Feedback on whether the service you received from our customer service representatives met your expectations.
Feedback on whether the service you received from our complaint resolution officers met your expectations.
Feedback on overall sense of satisfaction with various aspects of our process.
Timelines: Did we complete our work in a reasonable amount of time?
Professionalism: Were we professional, knowledgeable and courteous?
Impartiality: Did we act without favoritism to either you or your service provider?
What customers said about service provider public awareness activities
How did you first find out about the CCTS?
Service providers have committed to notify customers about the CCTS during their internal complaint-handling process. We asked our customers:
Did your service provider tell you about the CCTS during your efforts to resolve the problem?
Service providers are required to print a prescribed message about the CCTS on customer bills four times a year. We asked our customers:
Have you ever seen the notice on any of your bills?
Service providers have committed to placing a prescribed notice about the CCTS in a reasonably prominent place on their websites and to include a link to the CCTS website. We asked our customers:
Have you seen this information on the service provider website?
“Excellent service. I felt validated as a consumer, and it felt like I had a voice. I liked that I was able to receive a response within days. It expedited satisfaction. Well done.”
What customers said about their interactions with service providers concerning issues
We asked customers about their interactions with service providers before the CCTS became involved.
How long did you try to resolve your problem directly with your service provider before bringing your complaint to the CCTS?
How many levels of escalation (front line customer service, supervisor, manager, etc.) did your complaint go through with the service provider before you filed a complaint with the CCTS?
Knowing where to find us
Canadians need to be aware of or be able to easily find out about the CCTS when they need assistance in resolving disputes with their communications service providers. We take seriously the continuing need to ensure public awareness of the services that we provide.
The CCTS undertakes general public awareness activities, such as publishing our Annual and Mid-Year Reports, creating accessible video content for our YouTube page, regular public newsletters, social media presence and engagement, and providing media outlets with information and data. We also engage with consumer groups and civil society groups plus consumer protection agencies to seek outreach opportunities and appropriate referrals. PSPs are also required to contribute to building public awareness by carrying out the obligations of the CCTS Public Awareness Plan.
The objective of the CCTS’ Public Awareness Plan is to ensure that information about the CCTS is readily available to customers when they need it most — at the time they are experiencing a problem. The Plan sets out a variety of activities to be undertaken by service providers, such as notices about the CCTS on their websites, customer bill messages, and informing customers about the CCTS in the course of their’ internal complaint-handling processes.
Our Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Program conducts annual audits of PSPs to determine if they are carrying out the CCTS Public Awareness Plan, engages with PSPs to bring them into compliance, and reports on the results of the audit in our annual Compliance Monitoring Reports.
Our website is also a key tool for making sure consumers know where to find us when they need help the most. Again this year, more than a third of customers say they first learned about the CCTS through an online search. 314,000 customers visited our website last year and 86% of the complaints that we accepted were filed using our online self-serve tool.
The CCTS remains committed to ensuring that efforts are made to raise public awareness of customers’ right to recourse to the CCTS in the event of an unresolved dispute with a service provider. We will continue to review our PSP Public Awareness Plan and build public awareness through additional public-facing materials and enhancing the CCTS’ digital presence, social media campaigns, digital ads and search engine optimization.
Providing easy access to our services
Providing accessible service to all Canadians, including those with disabilities, is one of our core values. We deliver our service in a manner that accommodates persons with disabilities and reflects the principles of independence, dignity, integration and equality of opportunity, in line with the best practices of the Accessible Canada Act and the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
The CCTS Accessibility Committee meets regularly to discuss and plan the progress of our accessibility efforts. The CCTS also consults annually with groups representing Canadians with disabilities. In 2022, we had consultations with participants from five accessibility groups. During these discussions, we learned that the biggest hurdle for the accessibility community is the lack of awareness of the service offered by the CCTS. We will work with accessibility groups to share accessible material about CCTS to spread the word about our services.
Participants pointed out that it is often difficult for an individual with mobility, cognitive, sight, speech or vision challenges to access information that would be helpful for them in a time of need. The CCTS continues to welcome the feedback of under-represented and under-served communities regularly to inform our work and to ensure that accessibility requirements are included from the start.
As an information gateway for consumers, it is crucial that our website serves all Canadians. To meet the evolving needs of consumers, we regularly assess our website to ensure that our online self-serve tools and content meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. All of the CCTS’ videos are closed captioned and have an American Sign Language/langue des signes Québécoise (ASL/LSQ) version. Our publications, such as our Annual, Mid-Year and Compliance Monitoring Reports, are in an accessible HTML format.
While CCTS strives to ensure accessibility of our services, industry accessibility standards and requirements are set by the CRTC. The CCTS continues to track accessibility-related issues that appear in customer complaints, as requested by the CRTC and members of the accessibility community, and we refer complaints about accessibility issues to the CRTC.
For more information about our accessibility policies and guidelines, see our Accessibility web page and our Accessibility Plan.
Having meaningful discussions with consumer group stakeholders
Understanding the needs and challenges of consumers across the country helps inform how we provide our services. In February 2022, the CCTS held its first Consumer Advisory Panel which brought together representatives from nine consumer advocacy groups, representing the interests of consumers from coast to coast. At our inaugural Consumer Advisory Panel, we discussed a multitude of issues that impact Canadians daily, and received feedback from consumer groups including suggestions to increase public awareness and reach out to vulnerable consumers.
We look forward to this twice-yearly consultation, which will help the CCTS better understand the consumer experience with us and the needs of vulnerable consumers, identify emerging trends for consumers, and seek opportunities to collaborate for broader community outreach and awareness of the CCTS.