Vodafone to bring 2,100 customer service jobs in-house

Vodafone is to hire 2,100 more staffers in what appears to be a growing trend by telcos to improve customer service by bringing call centre roles back to Blighty.

Over the next 24 months, Vodafone UK will create 800 jobs at the company's existing customer services centre in Manchester; 150 new jobs at its existing contact centre in Newark; 150 new roles at its existing Stoke contact centre; and around 100 new roles at its existing Glasgow contact centre.

Currently most of those support roles are based in South Africa, where it uses an external agency.

At the end of last year, Vodafone was fined a record £4.6m for failing customers for mis-selling to customers, inaccurate billing and poor complaints handling.

Vodafone said the issues were due to errors "during a complex IT migration", which involved moving more than 28.5 million customer accounts and almost one billion individual customer data fields from seven legacy billing and services platforms to one.

The latest hires are part of its £2bn investment programme over the 2016-19 period.

In January, British mobile phone network EE also it would bring 1,000 customer service operator jobs in-house. Its corporate daddy BT, is also hiring 1,500 call centre staff in the UK and Ireland.

The move will also help boost Vodafone's image as a company that wants to stay in the UK, following its gaffe after the EU referendum when it hinted it might leave.

Secretary of state for Culture Media and Sport Karen Bradley said: “Vodafone is one of our country's great international success stories and it’s fantastic this global organisation is demonstrating its confidence in the UK by creating new jobs across the north, in the Midlands, in Scotland and in Wales.

Vodafone UK chief executive Nick Jeffery said: "These new, skilled roles will make a real difference to our customers and a real difference to the communities that are the focus of our customer services investment.

"Our ambition is to give our customers the best experience possible, providing an outstanding level of service and support as we continue to invest in building the biggest and best network in Britain." ®