BT Creates 1,000 UK Customer Service Jobs

BT is to create 1,000 new customer service jobs as part of plans to answer more than 80 percent of all consumer queries from within the UK by the end of the year.

The company wants to recruit new customer advisors, apprentices and graduates by April 2017, and says it has already improved its customer service operations with the addition of another 1,000 staff.

Swansea, which is also one of the locations for trials of G.Fast, will be the first contact centre to benefit, while the other positions will be spread around the country.

In addition to the new jobs, BT has also committed to simplifying contact processes, providing employees with 100 hours of training and improving official websites and applications.

BT customer service

“We will have created 2,000 permanent UK jobs by the end of this process, including agency transfers, which is a fantastic boost for the UK economy and many regions where we are already a significant employer,” said Libby Barr, BT Consumer managing director of customer care.

“Our advisors have recently agreed to support our investment back in the UK by voting to adopt a new work pattern to ensure we have more people available to answer calls in the UK at weekends and in the evenings.”

Recent Ofcom research found BT’s customer service satisfaction rating was around average in the landline sector but below the broadband average. Experts suggest BT’s efforts to improve customer care could be a key differentiator in an increasingly competitive UK communications market.

“BT sits somewhere in the middle when it comes to frontline customer care – it’s by no means the worst culprit, but there’s definitely room to improve,” said Ewan Taylor-Gibson, analyst at uSwitch.

“Bolstering its frontline customer care team is a clever move in an increasingly competitive market. Service is almost as important to bill payers as reliable broadband connections and fast speeds – it can be the difference between keeping and losing a customer.”