CRA's 100 Day Plan

Clients will be able to gain access to locked accounts/forgotten account info without contacting the CRA, among other things.

CRA 100 Day Service Improvement Plan

@AlbertaEFileT

Thanks very much for reference.

I am underwhelmed by the GoC and CRA calls answered calls goal. I

To the best of my recollection during the period of Nov 2007 to May 2008 at the Calgary Individual enquiry call centre line we had the following mandate:

For callers

Answered calls @ 98%

Average time on hold @ 3 minutes

For agents:

Average call duration at 3 minutes or less. Our mandate was to respond as quickly as we could with the minimum allowable information per our call script. When calls were on hold for too long the telephony manager had the ability to clear/ dump the calls on hold to improve our stats. In my opinion, there have to be richer, deeper, and broader suites of self serve options to bypass the need for calls. In addition, CRA needs to provide better workflows, templates, and systems available to CRA employees, taxpayers,taxpreparers for the forwarding of uploaded and written enquiries, requests, and rulings.

Well, perhaps by the end of the year, IF THEY KEEP ON IMPROVING, we may have calls answered!

When I worked at PubInfo in the 1970s we didn’t have a “script”. We answered, we listened, we responded and….when a caller needed specific peersonal tax-related info, it was forwarded to a second team in PubInfo for a callback…the returns were of course not automated so needed to be picked from Taxroll and send down to the PubInfo group. We didn’t have a “time mandate” either. And EVERYBODY got through. And we all had a pretty good grasp on basics in the ITA, and then some.

3 minutes? They can barely get ID done in 3 minutes now.

Answers? You’re lucky if they know what the ITA actually…is.

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@SmallBizGuy

Not kidding. Our target call time was 3 to 5 min on average. Those who did that were lauded and promoted. Those who did not were “corrected”. I was constantly under scrutiny and the recipient of “corrections” for digging into what the client needed to know and finding a way to get them the answer. I had worked as a professional tax preparer from 2000 onwards having prepared, reviewed, efiled, adjusted, and defended in tax review and tax audit first hundreds and then thousands T1’s each season. So, unlike most of my training year who had zero tax knowledge, I had a point of view of the client’s real request and what documents they would need or what tax rule they needed to follow. We were supposed to follow the script tightly by responding to the exact wording of the client’s question. So, yes, this was somewhat absurd.

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I guess the 100 days are up. A few adjustments I have completed in the last week all have target dates next summer.:astonished_face:

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That’s my experience, too! They answer the phone faster but now their “service standard” is some grossly far-off date on the basis that what I’m calling about has been deemed a “complex change”. But we’ll hear about how much faster they answer the phones so the 100 day deal was a success and they can forget about CRA’s inability to get anything done.

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The phone pickups up immediately and offers me a choice of French or online solutions. The time to answer can be at 11 minutes, but there still is no option to talk to a person in English. From the wait time calculator today:

1-800-959-8281

  • Wait time: 20 min

    Updated: 2:25 pm ET

That is a huge 100% improvement on the performance metrics.
I used to spend the day falling asleep and waited 40 minutes.
Great Job after 100 days :rofl:

It’s pretty sad when a 40 minute wait is a “huge 100% improvement”.

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Wait until they make it a 10 mintue wait and hang up. A 100% improvement 100 days and if they make it a 10 minute wait, that is 400% from the original. That is Canadian productivity on the rise. We don’t knew Elon, we can do it the Canadian way for government efficiency.

Wait….why did they not do it earlier.

And is this battle tested during tax season. Ug. :grimacing:

I just got off the phone with someone in GST (business) and he said the department for processing activation/backdating/elections is at least 10 months behind. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have an adjustment from Sept it is targeted from something like February.

Processing times have certainly gone downhill. One of my T1 clients was told an adjustment would take 50 weeks. This was early last summer. T2 assessments are taking 1-2 months. I dread to think what will happen with loss carry-backs.

Yeah, some of our adjustments have taken up to two years to process. This is the worst

Highly suggest everyone who encounters anything frustrating with CRA such as delays past processing times, incorrect algorithm processing errors by CRA, wrong information by CRA agents etc. File a Service Complaint. We do this for EVERY single issue we have with CRA the last 2 years. We are over 200 service complaints filed now for a small office. The reason we began doing this, was to hopefully put pressure on CRA to fill gaps in their organization & also for internal tracking on how much extra admin time we are spending in scenarios we shouldn’t be in, just to get resolutions for clients. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/make-a-service-complaint.html

We keep a copy in the client file awaiting CRA to respond & another copy in a Service Complaint folder so we can see how many we are doing, in order to be able to track the admin time going into them.

Of course there are other methods to dispute in certain scenarios, but where this one is applicable. I truly believe this is a great way for tax preparation offices to help have a leg to stand on for improving CRA quality of service. Even if the complaint seems minor, just do it, it takes less than 2 minutes. The more complaints they get, the quicker we see change! No complaints, longer it takes for changes.

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Might be a good idea. I have a little old lady who is 65 now and CRA assessed her taxes and included her RRSP contribution as income in 2020. This is just hanging there while she was hit was penalites and interest.

Be careful with your words :grin:. There are little old ladies and men on this forum.

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Or CRA might bump you up in their list of people to audit.

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So with that logic, we shouldn’t speak up about common issues we are all experiencing, out of fear for repercussions? I will gladly be part of the solution every time vs complaining on forums that provide no solution to the persisting issues CRA is experiencing. I think we would all appreciate a more stream lined process with CRA, to be able to effectively do our jobs better, provide a better service to our clients & reduce overall stress burdens for many taxpayers wrongfully put into difficult situations repeatedly by CRA. The option to file complaints is there for a reason, as a tool for the CRA to see where gaps are in their system. Not to reprimand people who utilize it. :slight_smile: