VodafoneThree Bringing 400 Customer Service Roles Back to the UK
Newly merged mobile and broadband operator VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK) has today announced that they’re bringing over 400 customer contact jobs, which were previously based in India, back to the United Kingdom. The roles will now be based out of the Belfast and Sheffield centres of the operator’s partner, Concentrix.
Despite the fact that mergers of major companies often result in some redundancies as roles are reduced to remove duplication and improve efficiency, there can sometimes also be areas where they’re increased or improved and this seems to be one of those examples.
The newly onshored roles, delivered by partner Concentrix, will focus on Vodafone and Three UK specialist care and sales, with 200 based in Belfast and 200 in Sheffield. Recruitment for these has already started and training of new agents is said to be underway in Belfast. The new recruits will add to the 830+ customer specialists based in the existing Stoke and Glasgow locations.
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Across the UK, around 9,000 engineering, construction and maintenance jobs will also be created through the business’s £11 billion investment in upgrades to their existing networks and services (e.g. the deployment of 5G Standalone technology), rising to 13,000 during the peak of the build
Jon Shaw, Consumer Operations at VodafoneThree, said:
“We firmly believe in having care teams where our customers are, and that means having teams based across the UK. It’s an exciting time to join VodafoneThree as we build the UK’s best network and set new standards for customer care in the industry.”
Lord Stockwood, Minister for Investment, said:
“This is a major boost for our digital and tech sector, which will not only create over 400 jobs in Sheffield and Belfast but open up new opportunities for local communities and put more money in people’s pockets. Our modern Industrial Strategy is all about unleashing the potential of our cities and regions, so it’s great to see VodafoneThree investing and creating opportunity in every part of the country.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Should be Illegal to outsource any customer service role they involves UK citizens financial details.
A credit card company I used to have did it and I cancelled
Three mobile did it and I cancelled
I don’t trust these people at all.
The Coinbase operation found out the hard way when people working at their call centre were bribed into handing over hundreds of thousands of peoples details.
It needs to be banned for security reasons.
I hate outsourcing but don’t think for one minute your details are any safer in the UK! I worked in a call centre in Manchester years ago. The Police marched in one day and arrested a male. Turned out him and a team of others were taking credit card details over the phone and taking down the details personally which they then used to order stuff to different addresses.
We got informed that the one person had made over £12,000 of purchases using all different cards.
Maybe you have a point but legal jurisdiction and ability to impose breaches of regulatory factors means it’s dealt with a lot better and satisfactory.
Just another reason for banning all outsourcing when concerned with financial details
Just in time to be replaced by AI.
That’s a rather pleasant development from the merger. As the article mentions, usually we get less jobs and not more. Though I suspect it’ll balance off with cuts to IT, HR, etc.
I’m someone who previously worked for Vodafone directly in the Specialist Care role and was transferred via TUPE across to Webhelp, who were then bought by Concentrix.
All I can say is the customer service element is horrendous when it’s outsourced. The staff are paid minimum wage and made to work awkward hours to cover what the client wants. Treated like dogs, given very little meaningful training or support and told to get results however they can.
The customer suffers because Concentrix will manipulate what they’re doing to meet VodafoneThree’s demands. Need to close more complaints because the client demands it? Cut corners, pretend to call people and just close the complaints. If the customer calls back we’ll deal with it another day.
Back when we worked for Vodafone directly there was a sense of pride that we were doing right by the customer despite what poor experience they might have already had to reach that stage – restoring faith in a brand we were happy to work for. There’s a reason I left the new company as soon as I could.
All this nonsense of bringing it back to the UK won’t mean anything unless they employ people directly again. It’s a symptom of outsourcing because nobody has any loyalty or drive to do any better than the bare minimum.
Great post
I love outsourcing. After all, Who doesn’t love having to communicate with someone who can’t understand what you’re saying and whom you can’t understand either? It’s great!
/s
Careful with that line of reasoning as management will ask well who can understand what they are saying, introducing another hiring bias…
And while that happens, Vodafone is currently making all its network engineers redundant, outsourcing the work to Ericsson and Nokia, who are then offshoring to India…!
Don’t think 400 additional CS roles will be enough to deal with what’s about to happen over the next years. Good luck
What effect on VodaphoneThree will the high court action by disenfranchised Vodaphone agents??