Santander, the UK’s third-biggest bank, has recently announced plans to create 500 UK-based jobs in a bid to improve customer services.
The decision was taken after feedback from customers who they where left “frustrated ” with the level of help they received when contacting the banks call centre in India. As of July 1, all calls handled by the Indian centres were transferred to staff based in Glasgow, Leicester and Liverpool.
In 2003, Santander outsourced its call centre operations to India, one in Bangalore and one in Pune.
A spokesman from Santander said that a number of customers had complained that staff in the India offices failed to understand their needs.
“A volume of the complaints said they would prefer to deal with call centres in the UK, where staff could understand them better as individuals and know where they are coming from. There were no specific concerns about accents or language barriers,” he said.
Santander hired an additional 500 UK staff to handle the estimated 1.5m calls each month. In total, Santander’s UK call centres employ 2,500 staff.
Santander UK is on a drive to improve customer service after topping the customer complaint tables published by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).
The bank has created 1,000 new staff in customer-facing roles, a specialist call centre team to deal with customers who need an issue with Santander resolving and a dedicated staff helpline to assist with customer issues.
