BT appears to have taken on board complaints about its overseas call centres by pledging to switch the vast majority of its operations back to the UK.
The move, which will see 80% of calls handled domestically by the end of the year, has led to the creation of more that 1,000 jobs, and hundreds of additional staff will be in place by the end of 2016 in addition to the jobs already filled.
Dedicated relationship managers will also be introduced to help customers resolve difficult issues.
BT currently has 20 contact centres across the country plus a range of offshore partners. The company said it would continue to use overseas call centres to help to deliver some services and campaigns but admitted it was the right time to commit more investment to the UK.
BT Consumer chief executive John Petter, 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.”
The commitment follows a report by Which?, published last week, that showed that having to deal with oversees call centres was the nation’s biggest customer service gripe.
Nearly half (46%) of those surveyed said they were irritated by call centres not being based in the UK, while perhaps not surprisingly just over a third (36%) dislike automated telephone systems.
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