October 27, 2017 - Telus Communications announced to its call centre employees that it is taking the issue of call centre abuse seriously.

In an email to its Canadian call centre employees, it announced a full call centre abuse program, including training for frontline agents as well as supervisory staff.

In the letter to staff from Senior Vice President Arleen King, she stated that “our number one priority here in Customer Experience (CE) is ensuring you, our team members, feel supported, safe and empowered to do your best each and every day.” King continued, “In speaking with leaders and team members, you told us there was an opportunity to improve our processes and support model for handling abusive callers. We took this feedback to heart. With that in mind, I’m pleased to share we’ve been working hard with team members across CE to create a fulsome abusive caller action plan.”

The announcement from Telus is welcomed by the United Steelworkers Local 1944.

“This is a positive step in protecting the workers at Telus who receive calls from customers,” stated Lee Riggs, National President of USW Local 1944. “It is great to see Telus, one of the 3 national telecommunications companies, stepping up to the plate and putting processes into action to train both supervisory and call centre staff in the handling of abusive calls. It is long overdue.”

In December 2016, USW Local 1944 launched the “Hang Up On Abuse” campaign calling on call centre employers to protect their workers from abusive callers.

According to Telus, the program will be implemented over Q4 of 2017 and Q1 of 2018.

USW Local 1944 will be monitoring this program closely in the months ahead to ensure that substantial progress is indeed being made to protect our members from customer abuse.

In Solidarity,

United Steelworkers Local 1944