Jayne Dowle: Call centres put the accent on their customers

MY husband is very pleased with himself. He thinks he has done his bit for the British economy. He is convinced that it was his own eviscerating customer complaint which finally tipped the banking giant Santander into bringing its call centres back to Britain from India, thus creating 500 jobs.

Here’s what happened. He had a modest ISA, taken out with the Abbey building society eight years ago. He wanted to cash it and close the account. Abbey now belongs to Santander. It involved several very technical and very frustrating conversations with someone in India to explain what he wanted to do, but eventually all seemed to be in order.

Two long weeks went by. He was anticipating the cheque, daily. But did the cheque turn up? No. What did drop through the letterbox was a letter advising him that the account was actually “dormant” and a tortuous process of identification “in branch” would be necessary before he could rescue his money.

Two long weeks wasted. Let’s just say it’s a good job that he didn’t need the cash to pay his tax bill or get me out of jail.

I will save you the incandescent details of what followed. But he did get his savings back, eventually. Now, normally, my husband is a very patient man. He has to be, living with me. But the experience of dealing with a call centre on the other side of the world, talking to a person who clearly, did not actually understand what this particular customer needed, tipped him over the edge. And I should add, there is no way you could describe my husband as xenophobic. He is well-travelled, has worked all over Europe and in Africa, and abhors any kind of racism. So it comes to something when such a well-balanced and all-round decent individual ends up enraged.

So now Santander has vowed to bring its call centres back here, he is happy. Not just because it means a boost for British jobs, but because he doesn’t like shouting at people – he just wants efficient customer service.

It’s become a bit of a cliché, complaining about “call centres in Bombay”, hasn’t it? A survey a couple of years ago reported that only four per of British people have had a good experience dealing with a call centre. But most people are just like my husband. It’s nothing personal. They don’t care whether the person on the end of the line is in Barnsley or Bangalore. They just want them to help.

Indeed, the really frustrating thing about foreign call centre staff is that usually they are scrupulously polite. It’s just that half the time they have little understanding of what or where they are being polite about. Train tickets to London from Blackpool, for instance.

And although it’s good news that more call centre jobs are being created in this country, there is no guarantee that those who get the jobs will be any more helpful than those several thousand miles and a couple of time zones away. Our mortgage provider, based in Essex, must have the most superior-sounding staff it is possible to employ. I’m told it’s the Estuary accent, though I can’t think what they have to be superior about, talking like that.

So come to think of it, it is personal. Deeply personal. When all you have to connect you with your customer is your voice, you have to be able to react and respond immediately to what they want. Even the prospect of “ringing India” can be enough to make a customer feel negative before they so much as pick up the phone.

The answer, as some companies are finding, is to concentrate technical issues and complex queries in this country, while out-sourcing more general enquiries abroad.

My dad, who sweated it out with his new digital TV box for two days before giving in and “ringing India”, will testify to the sense of that. Even after several protracted phone calls, the blasted thing still wouldn’t work, and the digital TV company ended up doing that quaint old-fashioned thing, and sent a man round. And it took him two solid hours. So how on earth the company expected my dad and some poor chap on the end of the line in India to get it going by themselves, I can’t imagine.

We are obviously witnessing a momentous turnaround in global economics, the full significance of which might not be felt for years to come. And it started in your living room, or at my kitchen table, accompanied by fierce doodles and headache tablets.

I sincerely hope that this doesn’t mean the decimation of the Indian call centre industry, but I feel sure that some emergent economy, China perhaps, will step into the breach left by the withdrawal of the Brits. That could make for some interesting linguistic moments.

Meanwhile, I will leave you with further heartening news for the economy. Serious research by academics at Bath Spa University found that when it comes to the most attractive regional accents, Yorkshire wins hands down. Call centre companies of the world, we are open for business.