After 25 Years In Moncton, RBC Contact Centre Employs 500 People
MONCTON- In 25 years, the RBC Advice Centre on St. George Blvd. has grown from 75 employees to 500. But in the past couple of months, almost 400 of those staff members have to work from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The 25 years that we’ve been in business, we’ve seen a lot of change, we’ve had a lot of challenges. We’re making it through this major crisis and it’ll be different going forward for sure,” said centre director Luc Pellerin.
“We don’t anticipate at this point to see everyone coming back [to the office]. We’re in the planning process and where you’re located going forward is going to look different for sure,” he added, noting the bank has invested a lot in boosting digital capabilities in recent years.
Employees that were sent home were given secure work laptops and tablets, headsets, and other technology that was needed to ensure the security of client information, Pellerin said.
Approximately 100 people still work in the office, with physical distancing measures like six feet in between desks, limited seats and one-way isles and hallways, among other things. Pellerin himself works from home and the office.
The move was happening so quickly, Pellerin said the timeline “was a blur,” but it was within two weeks that employees began working from home.
“It was challenging, we’ve learned a lot, but in empowering our people and bringing a great level of collaboration at all levels made the transition to working from home a huge success,” said Pellerin.
The centre opened in 1995, shortly after RBC started offering telephone banking. After two years in operation, enrolment in telephone banking was growing by 2,000 clients a day and surpassed 900,000 clients, making it the fastest-growing telephone banking service in the world.
Since May 2019, the centre took an average of 2.7 million calls and responded to 165,000 emails. Covid-19 has led to “historical” levels of call volumes, and “dramatic” increases of customers reaching out through the online and mobile channels, Pellerin said.
As one of Canada’s six biggest banks, RBC helps administer federal Covid-19 relief funds. Plus, customers are calling because they’ve been impacted by the pandemic and market volatility.
The Moncton centre is home to the bank’s only social media customer care team. The centre now serves 12 lines of businesses, including U.S. clients, credit, investments, home advice and others. It primarily caters to personal banking customers.
The pandemic hasn’t led to any layoffs.
“With the significant increase, we’re not out of it yet. Volumes are still way above forecast levels. If anything, we’ve re-deployed,” Pellerin said. “So, areas where we’ve gotten less busy, some of them were re-deployed to help the contact centre.”
For instance, because fewer people are visiting branches, employees who used to serve people in-person have been helping out by answering customers’ e-mails and calls.
“They have the skills. They were just in a different channel, different environment,” he said.
Moving forward, Pellerin sees the advice centre focusing on more complex transactions.
“That’s a trend that we’ve seen over the years,” he said. “As technology and digital have come to the forefront, more people are self-serving [their banking needs]. It just leads to less transactions. But the transactions that we do get involved in are of much higher complexity.”