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Telco to hire 1,000 U.K. contact centre staff in bid to improve satisfaction levels.

BT announced this week that it will spend £80 million over the next two years to improve customer service.

The investment will see the incumbent telco hire 1,000 extra U.K.-based call centre staff as part of its plan to ensure that 80% of customer service calls are handled from within the U.K. by the end of 2016. The hiring spree will start now and last until April 2017.

All of the jobs will be frontline roles in customer care, BT said in a statement on Monday.

In addition, BT has also pledged to give every customer care advisor an extra 100 hours of training.

"[BT] 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," BT said.

The announcement came less than a week after an Ofcom survey revealed that satisfaction among BT broadband customers lagged the industry average in 2015.

According to the U.K. telco regulator, 60% of BT broadband customers said they were satisfied, compared to an industry average of 67%. Sky and Virgin Media led the market with satisfaction rates of 80% and 70% respectively.

When it comes to landline telephony customer satisfaction, BT is average, with a satisfaction rate of 69% compared to the industry average of 70%, according to Ofcom. Once again though, Sky and Virgin scored above average, with 79% and 72% respectively.

TalkTalk lagged the market on both counts, scoring 53% for broadband and 56% for landline telephony, Ofcom said.
 

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