Over the past seven years there has been a number of factors that have impacted our call rate at the call centre. Certainly, there were cuts in 2012. There was reorganization. There were significant issues from a technology perspective, and on top of that, we had dramatically increasing volume rates. As programs change, the volume of calls and answer rates go up. Introducing new programs into the system, on top of the volume of clients coming into the country, has an impact on our call rate.
As a result of that, we've tried to break that down and deconstruct it in terms of what issues are most impacting us, what people are calling about and how we manage the volume beyond just answering the phone. This is why we've gone to things like email responses, telephone inquiries, call-back options, as well as looking at how we can use social media to respond to people's general inquiries.
One thing we found is that people are using the call centre to ask questions of a very general nature. That's required us to turn to our website to try to improve that, so that we can have a positive impact on the volume of our calls, and reduce that. Then we can introduce new technology, as indicated in my opening comments, around using artificial intelligence to serve clients in a better way.
We're trying to move from just a telephone call to a multi-pronged approach that serves clients to meet their needs, regardless of the kind of information that they're looking for, in a way that has a positive impact on the volume of calls.