May 10, 2010

(Letter sent to the editor of The Antigonish Casket)

Dear Editor:

We would like to clarify some facts from last week’s letter to the editor, written by Mike Moeller in regards to our recent proposed move of our external call centre operations to an outsourced service provider.

As a commercial Crown Corporation, we have a responsibility to ensure the long term health of the postal system for Canadians. While we registered a profit in 2009, revenues and mail volumes were down sharply, a trend which continues today. We therefore need to make changes to our business. Our current in-house call centre approach costs significantly more than industry standards and we need to make a change.

We want to reassure people of Antigonish that this change will be managed over time. We anticipate that the selection process for a new external service provider will be complete in time to start transferring calls in 2011. About half of the calls would remain with our in-house call centres at that time and slowly be transferred over as people leave or retire.

While other call centres in Ottawa and Edmonton will close in 2011, the Antigonish call centre will remain open and continue to be staffed by the 49 permanent call centre employees who are currently there and have job security. Our plan is to reduce our workforce through attrition. The 11 people on contract will remain on staff until 2011, which is essentially 11 months notice. We feel this is a fair approach to a difficult situation.

We remain committed to serving the people of Antigonish and providing good customer service. Even with the change, all customer calls will continue to be answered in Canada. It’s important that our customers get the right level of service from someone who understands where they live.

I hope that has helped provide clarity to the situation.

Denise Corra
Manager, Communications
Canada Post