Enhancing our Service Standards
We’re excited to share with you a new report card that outlines the levels of service that consumers and registrants can expect for RECO services, and how we are meeting those standards. The report shows our averages for the first three quarters of this year. Over the past year we’ve worked diligently to improve our standards in registration and complaints services.
For complaints, we’ve made great strides this past year. Between 2010 and 2016, the volume of complaints almost doubled and we built up a backlog. Earlier this year, the backlog reached about 1,600 complaints and it was taking us about 280 days to close a file on average.
We are happy to report that since then, we’ve ramped up our processing to significantly reduce the backlog. Ultimately, our goal is to reduce processing times to 120 days or better by the end of 2017 – and we are well on our way. As you can see in our report, in September it took us 126 days on average to close a file. Here’s how we did it. We:
- tightened our initial screening process so that we no longer open complaints that are frivolous, outside RECO’s jurisdiction or lack sufficient documentation;
- added additional staff to ensure more hands in specific areas as they are needed;
- created new, more streamlined processes, like our advertising complaints process; and finally,
- broadened our use of dispute resolution, encouraging parties to resolve issues where possible.
We are also strongly focused on online service delivery for registration services. This summer we moved to exclusive online self-service options, such as renewals, transfers and terminations for individual registrants. This will ultimately lead to faster and more efficient online renewal processing.
We also understand the importance of handling general inquiries in a reasonable period of time. When registrants and consumers have questions, we want to provide answers quickly, easily and accurately – without transferring calls to multiple departments. That’s why we launched a new client services centre, a single contact point with specially-trained staff to address most inquires on-the-spot, as they come in.
Our service standards report will allow us to closely track the impact of all these changes, hold ourselves to account, and share our progress with you. We’re proud of the developments we’ve made this past year and look forward to showing you the full impact of our recent efforts, in the coming months.
View RECO’s Service Standards Reports.
