Santander says sorry to customers by closing its India call centres

Santander has added its name to a growing list of British companies dumping their Indian call centres and bringing customer service operations back to the UK – and all for the sake of its customers says the bank

From this month, all of Santander UK's 1.5 million monthly customer service calls will be answered in this country, the company said. Britain's third-largest bank is creating 500 jobs in Glasgow, Leicester and Liverpool to absorb the calls that would have gone to Bangalore and Pune, taking the group's total UK contact centre staff to 2,500.

The move is a straightforward response to customer demand, according to Santander UK chief executive Ana Botin, who is struggling to improve the bank's customer service performance after it was rated third worst in the country last year.  Santander UK is on a drive to improve customer service after topping the customer complaint tables published by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

"Our customers tell us they prefer our call centres to be in the UK and not offshore," Ms Botin said. "We have listened to the feedback and have acted by re-establishing our call centres back here."
While other major global banks including Barclays and HSBC are still happily operating both onshore and offshore call centres, Santander is far from alone in bringing operations back onshore. United Utilities, BT and Powergen have also cut back. And as recently as last week, New Call Telecom announced plans to shift its Mumbai call centre back to Lanchashire.

"We are not seeing the end of the Indian call centre," Stephen Whitehouse, at consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers, said. "But thanks to retailers like Tesco and John Lewis, the expectation on day-to-day service has been significantly raised, and customers do want to speak to someone within their country that can resolve their enquiry at the point of call."

There are also pressing financial factors. Companies wowed by the potential cost reductions of moving offshore soon found the expense of managing far-flung operations eating into their savings. Costs are also rising as India's economy continues to rocket, with attrition rates of up to 35 per cent amongst call centre staff and wages set to balloon by 13 per cent this year. New Call Telecom was explicit last week that its decision to re-locate to Burnley came down to price, and it is by no means the only company feeling the squeeze.

There have also been major changes in the nature of customer service operations themselves. As self-service via the internet has taken off, the need for large-scale telephone help lines is diminished. And those calls made, tend to be more demanding.

Add in the rise in multichannel  strategies – giving customers the options of contacting the company using anything from email to webchat to automated voice services – and the picture is more complex still. While customer service on the telephone may be best done from the UK, other elements can still be run effectively from elsewhere.