Earlier this week, unnamed Rogers employees told CBC’s Go Public about the company’s alleged high pressure sales tactics, which targeted everyone, including seniors.
Now, CBC’s Go Public is reporting a follow up story, where over two dozen current and former Rogers employees have shared more about their work environments, describing “toxic”, “high pressure” and “intense” conditions aimed at making sales from every customer.
One ex-Rogers employee, who worked for four years at the company’s Brampton, Ontario, call centre, claims management told workers to not mention cancellation fees for customers switching over from rivals.
The employee, whose employment history was verified by the CBC, explained “Because these fees were not charged by Rogers itself, we were told to gloss over them as quickly, vaguely and incoherently as possible,” adding “Often while the customer was speaking at the same time.”
This same employee also noted another sales tactic, which was to secretly remove some Rogers services such as TV channels, to open up opportunities to add new services for customers such as a landline, which they did not require, but only to push up monthly sales targets.
“It was a calculated game of misery,” wrote the employee to Go Public. “How much could you lower their existing services so they wouldn’t immediately notice, while at the same time adding as much in new services as you could?”
Apparently when he voiced his concern to his manager over these sales tactics, he was told working in sales means “It’s not your job to care.”
Another tactic reportedly used by Rogers was to repeatedly transfer customers to other agents, if they were ready to cancel a service or make changes which would affect sales targets. “The goal,” he says, “was for the customer to be so frustrated, speaking to someone who couldn’t do anything more than you, that they ended the call.”
Another story comes from a former Rogers manager from the company’s Ottawa call centre. He says pressure was intense to push sales and weak employees not selling would be fired. “Grown men would be crying, desperate because they couldn’t sell enough,” he says. “But sales was everything.”
After Go Public reported their first story, Rogers sent out a memo to employees directing them how to respond to customers, if they asked questions about the CBC story, to say things like they aim “to be clear and fair with customers every time they contact us.”
The follow story by Go Public also shares more accounts by Rogers employees and customer experiences inn detail, not described here.
Rogers again responded to the CBC with a statement, saying “there is no tolerance in our organization for unethical practices — this applies to every team member, at every level.”
So far, we’ve heard about high pressure sales tactics from Bell employees and now Rogers employees. Who’s next? Telus?
