Santander's new boss in the UK, Ana Botín, will close all of its Indian call centres and redirect all calls to Britain as part of a drive to improve customer service at the rapidly expanding high street bank.

The move comes after the Spanish-owned bank topped complaints tables compiled by the Financial Services Authority and customer research found they regarded Indian service centres as one of their biggest frustrations.

Call centres were created in Bangalore and Pune in India in 2003, before Abbey National was bought by Santander and at a time when other organisations, including banks, insurance groups and company finance departments, were trying to cut costs.

Lloyds Banking Group has already moved its call centres back to Britain in response to complaints.

Botín, the daughter of the Spanish group's chairman, has insisted that improving service is top of her to-do list since taking the helm last year to replace António Horta-Osório, who defected to Lloyds as chief executive.

She said: "Improving the service we offer is my top priority. Our customers tell us they prefer our call centres to be in the UK and not offshore. We have listened to the feedback and have acted by re-establishing our call centres back here."

The bank's existing call centres in Glasgow, Leicester and Liverpool have created an extra 500 jobs to cope with the move. A total of 2,500 people are now employed at these centres.

New staff have been on training courses for the past few months and calls have already been switched from India back to the UK during the past month.

The new roles are understood to have largely matched the number of jobs that were lost when the call centres were set up in Bangalore and Pune.

Botín, who is scheduled to make presentations to City investors in September as part of a plan to spin off the bank on the UK stock market, said: "This is a great example of how we are redefining Santander UK and putting our customers first. This is a major step for us and I am determined that we will do even more to improve the service we offer as I plan further initiatives later this year to build on the progress we are making."

But she admitted the float might not now be on track. "Market timing is important," Botín told the BBC. "Right now is probably not the best time, but we'll be making that final decision in the next few weeks [or] next few months."

The bank insisted that other initiatives had already helped to improve service. Santander – which includes Alliance & Leicester and parts of Bradford & Bingley – dropped to second place in the complaints league table, behind Barclays, in the second half of last year after receiving 165,000 gripes about its banking services.

Santander said: "Eighty per cent of all complaints are now dealt with within 48 hours. Financial Services Authority data also showed that the volume of banking complaints received by Santander fell by 24% from the first half of 2010 to the second half."

Botín's predecessor, Horta-Osório, is also attempting to improve complaints levels at Lloyds, which received nearly 2,000 a day in the second half of 2010. He has forced the bonuses of top executives to be tied to customer service and pledged to cut the number of complaints by 20%.

Lloyds' move to bring calls back to the UK was taken in 2007, when the bank said customers would be able to call local branches, but it does not appear to have helped reduce complaints.

Other businesses are also returning call centres to the UK. For instance, last week telecommunications company New Call Telecom moved one of its centres from India to Burnley, Lancashire.