Vodafone pledges to invest £15m in UK call centres

tmw bags vodafone and new chiefVodafone may be threatening to move its HQ out of the London in the wake of the Brext vote but it has beefed up its commitment to the UK market by announcing a £15m investment in its call centres.
Whether it will be enough to fend off massive fines from regulator Ofcom over customer complaints is another matter but it has pledged 600 new customer service advisors, bringing its total number to 1,400, as well as 72,000 extra hours of training for employees.
The company will also open a new contact centre in Glasgow, adding to its operations in Newark, Leeds, Manchester and Stoke.
According to Ofcom, Vodafone was the most complained about telecoms provider in the three months ending in December 2015, due network failures that meant many users could not make and receive calls or were billed incorrectly.
It is believed that a significant proportion of recent complaints were due to a new billing and service system. Call centres received 500,000 fewer queries in the last six months after faults were resolved.
Ofcom has launched two investigations into Vodafone’s customer service and complaint handling and it still may face fines of up to 10% of its annual turnover.
“We are always disappointed when customers have needed to raise complaints with us and, more so, when we then do not resolve them effectively first time,” a Vodafone spokeswoman said.
“Our teams, at all levels, want to provide our customers with a great service every time but we are clearly not there yet, so are investing significant resources to do so as quickly as we can.”

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