I accidentally in your base

I just phoned Abbey phone banking - in some dread, as I've not had a single non-painful experience with their phone banking since they outsourced it all to India a few years ago, and this time I wanted to do something a bit complicated. Much to my surprise, the phone was answered by a Scottish accent.

We proceeded to set up a standing order, and set up an irregular bill payment option, and pay some money through the bill payment option to cover the fact that the standing order wouldn't get there in time. Oh, and get my available balance after this was done. All of this in less time than it took the Indian call centre to find me the opening hours for the Tottenham Court Road branch when I rang them on Saturday*.

I had to ask her howcome I was talking to someone who actually understood what I was saying. She managed not to laugh too much, and explained that there is still one call centre in Scotland, but the Indian centre(s) are larger, so the vast majority of the calls go to them.

All this leaves me wondering how on earth Abbey can justify the shocking drop in their customer service quality caused by the move to Indian call centres. Surely the savings can't in any way correspond to the amount of customers their slow, uncomprehending, badly scripted, initiative-lacking drones piss off on a daily basis? Every time you mention the call centres in a branch, they nod and say that loads of people complain about them, every single day. Gah.

</rant>


* "9am-3pm today Mr Haye"** - so I walked up there only to find that it's actually closed all day on Saturdays.
** yes, they always get my name wrong, every single time. No, the Scottish woman didn't.