In Sight – A Call for Transparency

Project Description:

Over the years, the number of people aspiring to migrate to Canada has steadily increased. The pandemic has caused longer than usual application timelines. This increase has led to a drastic overload of IRCC’s Client Support Centre, resulting in long wait times on calls and a sharp increase in client dissatisfaction.
This project investigates the systems to address the issue. Our team focuses on curating satisfactory call-center experiences for applicants applying through the Family Class immigration pathway. We take the Human-centred Design methods to redesign the client service experiences to boost caller satisfaction and relieve the overload on the current client service departments of IRCC.
The research team began by developing a multi-method approach to collect data on the current situation within the IRCC. To do so, a survey was designed in order to produce a high-level understanding of the most prevalent points of frustration amongst a diverse participant sample. This survey also functioned as a method of recruiting participants for a qualitative analysis of the problem space.
The recruited participants underwent comprehensive interviews in a semi-structured format, based on a line of questions informed by our data from the survey. In this portion of the research, the team delved deeper into the causes and mental models that resulted in the patterns of repeated calls to IRCC.

Information from these sources, along with an exhaustive literature review helped us derive a few key-insights. This phase of the research was interesting because it validated a few of our initial assumptions while discarding others. For instance, the team started off with the assumption that the immigration application process was complex thereby causing people to call the IRCC client support. However, we learned that a majority of the applicants found the application procedure to be fairly straightforward.
Through the key insights, we confirmed that most of the calls to IRCC happen after the application is submitted. These calls are mostly to gain updates on the status of their application. It was also discovered that due to the lack of communication between the application process steps, clients felt like their application was lost or forgotten about. The team realized that the long silences between updates and the opaque nature of the current application process give rise to a lot of anxiety that quickly translated into an increased number of avoidable calls to the IRCC.

This anxiety, the study found, manifests in applicants forming groups on social media to compare timelines and share information with each other. Unfortunately, it turns out that, even though the applicants form these groups to relieve anxiety and stress, they are instead subjected to misinformation. Moreover, the act of comparing timelines also elevated stress and panic, directly resulting in calls to the customer support line.

The team recognized this to be our area of intervention.
The researchers decided to revisit the application portal and see how the issue of transparency could be tackled. We learned that by merely breaking down the application process into smaller milestones, the clients feel a sense of movement in their application. This reduces anxiety and will combat the feeling of applications being lost or stagnant. Moreover, showing more of the application process will also increase transparency in the IRCC process and dissuade panicking applicants from comparing timelines by showing that every timeline is unique.
Additionally, having more information online about the application process will also help fight unhelpful and untrue rumours about the IRCC that causes additional distress… Thereby, freeing up space for IRCC to tackle more urgent issues.

Contact the Team

Gallery