Twenty-nine years of queues, renewals and outages

Mandate

Make service dependable on the credit union's hardest days while keeping operating costs within a member-owned institution's means.

Outcomes

• Cut the French-language wait from 9.5 to 4.1 minutes during the 2023 renewal season
• Reduced annual fraud losses from C$1.38 million in 2021 to C$590,000 in 2025
• Paid C$538,000 of offline cash during a four-day outage with C$1,850 unrecovered
• Equipped seven isolated branches with generators and satellite links for C$810,000

Decisions in context

The chief operating role brought together work I had done separately for most of my career: telephones, payments, fraud and branches. What changed was the kind of decision. As a vice-president I could ask for more advisers; as chief operating officer I had to decide what to give up to pay for them, and explain it to a board elected by members. I lead six directors and work closely with our chief financial officer and our head of risk, who do not always agree with me. The three cases on this site each involved one of them arguing a different course, and in each the board saw both arguments. I attend board meetings to present and answer questions; I am not a director of Brayloche, and I do not vote on the decisions I recommend.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking a first independent board seat alongside it.

Mandate

Finish the service side of the merger: one set of hours, scripts and authorities, and a branch network suited to where members actually lived.

Outcomes

• Reduced the network from 29 to 21 branches, keeping cash machines and advice days in four villages
• Moved routine calls from branches to a single bilingual contact centre
• Harmonised branch approval limits and opening hours across both predecessor networks

Decisions in context

I joined twenty months after the merger that created Brayloche, and the two predecessor credit unions still worked as separate organisations sharing a logo. Branch managers in the northeast could approve things their colleagues on the Fundy coast could not, and members noticed. My first year went into common hours, scripts and authorities, negotiated with managers who each believed their own practice was the better one. The branch review followed. We closed or merged eight branches over three years, and I learnt that travel time for older members mattered more than the counts of visits I had relied on. During the pandemic, the contact centre absorbed work from closed counters, which proved the case for it faster than any business plan had. Twelve branch colleagues moved into the centre during that year, and their local knowledge shortened many calls.

Reason for the move

Succeeded the retiring chief operating officer after an external search in which I was the internal candidate.

Mandate

Reduce merchant losses from disputes and fraud while keeping round-the-clock monitoring affordable.

Outcomes

• Reduced average dispute resolution from 34 to 19 days
• Restructured the overnight monitoring desk around call-back rules rather than automatic blocks
• Wrote stand-in processing rules after a three-hour authorisation outage in 2015

Decisions in context

Halvernet taught me the economics of the overnight shift. Our analysts watched merchant transactions around the clock, and the most valuable thing they did was telephone a merchant whose terminal was behaving strangely at three in the morning. That call cost money to provide every night, including the many nights nothing happened. I reorganised the desk so analysts called first and blocked only when they could not reach anyone. Dispute work was slower and more procedural: evidence, deadlines and rules set by the card networks. In 2015 an authorisation outage lasted three hours, and I saw how much depended on stand-in rules written in advance. I wrote them again afterwards. I left because I wanted to return to work where the customer was a member I might meet in a branch.

Reason for the move

Returned to New Brunswick to lead member service at a credit union.

Mandate

Stabilise servicing after rapid growth and bring arrears handling and renewals under consistent procedures.

Outcomes

• Built a maturity schedule forecasting renewal conversations by week up to a year ahead
• Increased early contact with borrowers in arrears from about 40% to 85% within thirty days
• Cut renewal documents issued late from 11% to under 2%

Decisions in context

I arrived in Montréal in September 2008, weeks before the financial crisis made every lender look harder at arrears. Maudrelle funded its mortgages through securitisation, and investors wanted servicing that followed the same procedure every time. My team handled renewals, payment changes and arrears. The renewals surprised me most: every maturity date was known years in advance, yet the work arrived each spring as an unplanned peak with letters sent late. I built a weekly maturity schedule that let us plan staff and send documents on time. For arrears, I moved contact earlier, because a borrower called in the first weeks had more options than one called after three missed payments. Credit and collections policy remained with the risk team; my responsibility was making the procedures work for each borrower.

Reason for the move

Moved into payment operations to broaden my experience of risk and round-the-clock service.

Mandate

Plan staffing for both language queues and reduce the gap between French and English answer times.

Outcomes

• Introduced half-hour forecasting by language and call type
• Narrowed the French–English answer-time gap from about six minutes to under two
• Created a reserve roster for system faults and billing errors

Decisions in context

Workforce planning turned my frustration as an agent into a method. I forecast calls by half-hour, by type and by language, and I learnt how much of a queue was decided weeks earlier when the schedule was built. The French queue was usually the longer one, not because anyone intended it but because fewer bilingual agents were rostered at peak times. I changed hiring and shift patterns to close most of that gap. I also learnt what forecasts cannot do: a billing error in 2006 produced more calls in one afternoon than we expected in a week, and the reserve roster I created afterwards came from that day. I managed eleven team leaders and argued my staffing plans with a finance director who wanted every extra agent justified, which made my forecasts far more careful.

Reason for the move

Joined mortgage servicing to manage a full operation rather than a single channel.

Mandate

Answer cardholder calls in English and French, then lead a bilingual team on fraud and billing enquiries.

Outcomes

• Handled card, billing and fraud calls in both languages
• Led one of the centre's first teams trained to handle fraud reports end to end
• Proposed a shorter call-back procedure for declined cards that was adopted in 2001

Decisions in context

I came to Moncton straight from university because the centre needed people who could switch between English and French within a call. The work was repetitive and taught me a great deal. I took calls about lost cards, disputed charges and declined purchases, and I saw how a procedure designed to protect the card issuer could leave a customer standing at a counter. After two years I led a team of fourteen agents, mostly on fraud and billing enquiries. I coached call quality, covered absences and learnt how quickly a team tires when it is understaffed for weeks. My proposal for a shorter declined-card call-back was my first change to a procedure, and its adoption persuaded me to look for work in operations rather than sales. I also met the people who later trained me in workforce planning.

Reason for the move

Promoted to operations manager responsible for workforce planning.