Praise to Santander & New Call Telecom for Bringing Call Centres Back to UK

Santander and New Call Telecom are to be praised. They have realised that having their call centres based offshore does not give their customers the best level of service. However, I would give a word of caution; make sure enough money is invested in training.

As anyone who has had to deal with a call centre based abroad knows, it can be an extremely frustrating experience and it does feel like companies that go down this route are looking at profit over customer care, and that is a false saving.

As a call answering service, we often have to deal with cold callers that are based abroad and it is sad to hear how poorly the caller has been trained in even the basics of English. On occasion their accent can be very strong meaning that an English person has trouble understanding them (as I am sure they would if we tried to speak in their language).

This, therefore, gives the company that uses foreign call centres a poor image - that's if we manage to understand who they are calling on behalf of.

Of course, dealing with poorly-trained call centre staff in England is still frustrating, but at least you don't have the difficulty of having to repeat the same information several times because the person you're speaking does not understand the wide range of English accents and colloquialisms. While not a call centre example, I do remember a woman being told that the French restaurant didn't serve duck quiche, because she had said “I'll have the quiche, duck” (the lady in question referred to everyone as “duck” or “ducks”).

No matter whether a company has an in-house team, or they outsource so a 3^rd party to provide the service, there needs to be sufficient training put in place to ensure that all staff are able to deal with callers quickly and efficiently; not leave them wishing they hadn't bothered.

So, while I welcome the news of Santander and New Call Telecom, I repeat that they need to invest enough in the training so that call centre staff can meet and even exceed the callers' requirements. Then both companies will be seen to provide a high level of customer service and this will have a positive effect on the bottom line.