18
January
2016
|
09:22
Europe/London

BT expands workforce in Wales with 100 new jobs in Swansea

Summary
BT today announced that it will be recruiting 100 new posts to its Swansea base as part of its commitment to answering more than 80 per cent of BT Consumer customers’ calls from within the UK by 2016.

BT today announced that it will be recruiting 100 new posts to its Swansea base as part of its commitment to answering more than 80 per cent of BT Consumer customers’ calls from within the UK by 2016.

The new roles in Swansea form part of an overall commitment by BT to create 1,000 permanent jobs across the UK between now and April 2017.

BT’s Consumer division has already filled an extra 1,000 roles in its UK contact centres to enable it to service more of its consumer customers in the UK. The first location to benefit from the announcement will be Swansea, where the additional 100 customer service roles will be on top of the 50 extra advisors recently hired at the site.

The rest of the new jobs will be spread across the UK at BT’s other existing contact centres. Further details will be announced in the coming months.

All of the jobs will be frontline roles in customer care. The company wants to recruit new advisors to answer customers’ queries, as well as apprentices and some graduates. Some of the new permanent jobs will be taken by the best agency advisors, who currently carry out BT work via Manpower.

Libby Barr, managing director of customer service at BT Consumer, said: “We announced in September 2015 that BT Consumer is going to answer more than 80 per cent of its customers’ calls in the UK by the end of 2016 and this means we need more people in our UK contact centres.”

“We will have added 2,000 permanent UK jobs by the end of this process, which is a fantastic boost for the UK economy and many regions where we are already a significant employer.

“Our advisors have recently agreed to support our investment back in the UK by voting to adopt a new work pattern to ensure we have more people available to answer calls in the UK at weekends and in the evenings. This demonstrates the commitment from everyone at BT to work together to improve customer service and to make things easy for our customers.”

Alwen Williams, director for BT Cymru Wales, said: “Swansea is increasingly playing a key part in BT’s strategy both in terms of its customer care initiative but also its ultrafast broadband delivery - which is great news for the local community and economy.”

“These new permanent posts in the customer care team will provide rewarding career opportunities within BT and reflect positively on the good work that our team are already doing in Swansea and the quality of the workforce that we can draw upon in Wales.

“These are exciting times for the telecoms industry and this announcement reinforces the value that BT places on customer care and also our commitment to Swansea and Wales.”

BT Consumer has committed to improve customer service and is spending an extra £80m over two years to boost performance, in addition to the hundreds of millions it spends each year on service.

Along with answering more calls in the UK, every advisor will each receive an extra 100 hours of training. The company is also investing in new simpler systems for its advisors, improving service on bt.com and has launched the BT App that allows customers to do things like check their bill or track the progress of their engineer if they have booked a home appointment.