Bank shuts down India call centres: Customer fury forces Santander's return to UK



A major bank has brought all its call centres back to the UK from India to try to restore its reputation with customers.

Santander, which owns Abbey National, Bradford & Bingley and Alliance & Leicester, said the move was in response to complaints about its operations in Bangalore and Pune.

The switch was approved by UK chief executive Ana Botin, who took over the business last December. She said: ‘Improving the service we offer is my top priority.

Complaints: Santander is on a drive to improve customer service

‘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.

‘I am determined that we will do even more to improve the service we offer.’ The bank has set up three centres in Glasgow, Leicester and Liverpool to take the 1.5million calls it receives a month. The sites will employ 2,500 staff, 500 of them new hires.

A spokesman for consumer watchdog Which? said: ‘Santander has consistently come bottom of our customer satisfaction surveys.

‘So it’s great that they want to improve things.’

The Financial Services Authority said 165,000 complaints were made about Santander in the second half of last year.

Out: Santander said its customers preferred UK-based call centres (Picture posed by model)

The bank is one of a number of firms relocating their call centres from India and other developing countries because of customer complaints.

Another factor is higher pay. In China, for example, manufacturing workers were paid 69 per cent more last year than in 2005. And – because of the fragile state of the jobs market – firms are finding it easier to hold on to their UK staff and avoid high training costs.

Last month BSkyB announced it would open a call centre creating 400 jobs in Newcastle rather than overseas.

The firm has other centres in Yorkshire, Cheshire and Scotland. Chris Stylianou, the satellite broadcaster’s deputy managing director of operations, said of the decision: ‘Our customer contact centres are the lifeblood of our business.’

Last week New Call Telecom said it was moving one of its call centres from India to Lancashire.

It transferred its business to Mumbai three years ago but increased costs have prompted the return to Burnley. Santander says it has reduced the volume of complaints over the past year and 80 per cent of all disputes were now dealt with within 48 hours.

It boasted that this was because it had introduced a number of customer-focused initiatives, with Miss Botin saying more are on the way.

‘We are redefining Santander and putting our customers first,’ she added.

The bank says it has recruited 1,000 staff whose role is to deal directly with the public. It now employs 24,000 workers across 1,400 UK branches.

Miss Botin’s father, Emilio, is chairman of the whole Santander group, which was founded in Spain and has banking interests across Europe and South America.