ISP BT to Recruit 500 New Customer Service Staff for the UK and Ireland

The consumer (retail) division of BT has today announced that they intend to further improve customer service quality by hiring 500 people for related roles at its business in the United Kingdom and Ireland (mostly front-line positions in customer care).

Today’s move complements BT’s earlier promises to both hire 1,000 extra staff for customer care roles by the end of March 2017 (here) and answer “more than” 80% of customer calls in the United Kingdom by the end of 2016 (here), with the latter also being targeted to reach 90% by March 2017 (the bulk of this effort has already completed).

Apparently the biggest beneficiaries of the extra staff will be BT’s contact centres in Swansea, Warrington, Doncaster and Accrington. Other new jobs will be across the UK and Ireland. The provider will also be offering current Manpower agency staff the chance to convert their role into a permanent job working directly for BT.

Libby Barr, BT Consumer’s MD of Customer Care, said:

“We are proud to be creating these new jobs in the UK and Ireland. BT is completely changing the way we serve our customers in order to boost our service levels.

We are going to answer 90 per cent of our customers’ calls in the UK and Ireland by the end of March, and we have been taking on great people to fill full time jobs working for BT. In fact, we will be recruiting for an extra 500 positons, which will be a dramatic increase in what we said we’d do.

We can offer the chance to join a business that is transforming its service and investing in brilliant and motivated people in the UK and Ireland. There are opportunities to earn £500 by referring a friend and also openings for agency advisors who want to work for BT directly.”

The extra staff should help BT to improve its support quality, which is particularly important for their fixed line broadband products. Ofcom’s Q2 2016 consumer complaints report noted that the ISP attracted more broadband gripes than any of the other major ISPs (here), although they did a better job for fixed line phone services (i.e. fewer complaints than many of their major rivals).