BT puts the British back into customer service

BT Consumer has promised to answer more than 80 percent of its customers’ calls in the UK by the end of 2016, and plans to “go further in years to come”. BT has created more than 1,000 new UK jobs in preparation to meet this commitment, and plans to create hundreds of other customer call centre positions in the UK over the next year.

The company is in the midst of overhauling the service it offers to customers including providing dedicated relationship managers to support customers with complex issues, offering more online support with its My BT customer service app, and creating jobs in the UK so that customers can speak to UK based agents.

BT says it will continue to outsource back office work and functions that does not involve taking customers’ calls offshore. “This move is the most visible evidence of the company’s efforts to improve its customer service. BT will continue to invest millions of pounds to improve its service,” said BT.

John Petter, chief executive of BT Consumer, said: “Our customers have told us that they would prefer to speak to a contact centre in the UK when they call us. When we launched BT Mobile earlier this year we located customer service in the UK and our customers have valued that.

“We think doing this for our other products is one way in which we can boost the service that we offer customers. This move will secure thousands of existing UK jobs and create new UK jobs.”

He added: “Our offshore partners have provided a good level of service for our customers and we will still have offshore partners to help us to deliver various campaigns and services. But we believe that now is the right time to commit more investment to the UK and that this is something that customers will appreciate.”