back to article TSB takes on 250 complaint-wranglers to absorb £200m outage fallout

British bank TSB is reportedly hiring an extra 250 customer service bods to help it cope with an avalanche of customer complaints after its IT meltdown earlier this year. The Press Association reported the sudden hiring surge at the bank, which suffered a week-long outage in April, caused by a botched systems upgrade and data …

  1. katrinab Silver badge
    Unhappy

    54 people who maybe sort of know what they are doing, trying to supervise 250 people who know nothing. I'm not sure that's going to work.

    1. DreamEater

      Why let facts get in the way of a good PR announcement

    2. hplasm
      Devil

      To be fair...

      "54 people who maybe sort of know what they are doing, trying to supervise 250 people who know nothing."

      ...it's usually the other way around.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The simple solution is to get your best people to do the training then you can sit back and watch customer satisfaction go down the drain.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      54:250

      I personally have had worse ratios and excelled so it depends upon the quality of the 54.

      ~1:5 ratio here is like expensive private education against ~1:30 in state schools, both can manage to produce the next generation of experts, given time and interest.

      That their customers may be unwilling to give them the time will be the real determinant of sucess.

      1. katrinab Silver badge

        Re: 54:250

        This is a live working environment, not a classroom.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @katrinab "This is a live working environment, not a classroom"

          and yet the 5 new agents per experienced one still need to learn how to do the job, whilst they may not necessarily have a blackboard it will still require a teacher and students.

          My point was that 5 students to 1 teacher is not going to a problem if the teacher could handle any problem alone. Simply, the 5 learn to collect all the required info such that in the event that they encounter a new problem they have all details availible for their teacher to relay the solution, once they know the solution to the new problem they can relay to their peers and over a short time the teacher will have passed on 90% of their ability.

          Given that employees capable of dealing with 90% of the problem are the norm in the UK with the 10% being handled by external consultants/escalation then what more do you want? Expertise is expensive and deemed unnecessary when management belief is that everyone except them is replacable with someone off the street armed with 2 weeks of training. I am not saying I agree but this has been the Business Studies opinion since the '90s

  2. 0laf
    Devil

    Cynical me?

    "Oh you're so pissed of with the complaints procedure you're going to give up, that's a shame we're here to help after all."

    Tick.

    129,999 to go.

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Only now?

    You'd think they'd have realised at the time they were going to need extra hands to help this. But then you'd think they'd have realised a lot of things at the time but they didn't.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Only now?

      You'd think they're closing the door after the horse has bolted, but their new platform is such a shitshow that they still need them.

    2. Cuddles

      Re: Only now?

      "You'd think they'd have realised at the time they were going to need extra hands to help this."

      They did. They used to have 54 people in complaints. They have hired a bunch more and now have 260. They have realised that wasn't enough and are now hiring an additional 250.

  4. Chronos

    They're going to need more...

    ...if this is the same Trustee Savings Bank Bank who told a mate of mine they "can't just cancel a direct debit" despite the words "cancel [...] at any time" appearing verbatim in the DD guarantee. I'm pretty sure "any time" includes the moment he asked and advised him to telephone them again and say exactly that.

    I believe we need a new collective term for bankers. "Wunch" would be my suggestion.

  5. cd

    Do you have credit unions over there? Maybe someone should look into them. Over here they have a co-op network between them which gives me 30k branches and ATM's to use free.

    Our banks suck also. Not a soupcon of truth or help from any of them, just increased chiseling.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Do you have credit unions over there?"

      We have both credit unions and building societies, yes (no experience of the unions, but the mutually-owned building socieities have been pretty good in my experience.

    2. katrinab Silver badge

      We have credit unions, but they are not a replacement for a bank.

      We also have building societies, but the only one that offers clearing bank services is Nationwide.

      We have a co-op bank, but they are pretty useless.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "British bank TSB"

    That would be the Spanish-owned TSB, would it?

    https://www.tsb.co.uk/sabadell-information/

    "Since 2015, TSB has been part of the Spanish banking group Sabadell.

    Right from day one, Sabadell wanted us to continue to build on our good name and proud heritage. Today, our mission remains the same as ever – to bring more competition to the UK market.

    That’s a good thing for Britain and for UK banking."

    A Spanish-owned bank competing in UK retail banking's race for the gutter or the race for Twitbank of the Decade may not have been what the TSB customers had been hoping for.

    Girobank. G1R 0AA. You know it made sense. Many other countries still have their own Girobank equivalent. But not the UK, not since ... well, ages ago really.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bank fines "should they be against profits"

    Should Banks be able to take fines of profits?

    When I get a speeding fine trying to get to a meeting, I can't put it against my profits so why can they?

    They should pay the Corp tax on all fines.

    When they make lots of profits and don't pay me any interest on my saving, should the dividends be shared with me?

  8. Ste Van De Mull

    What we need is a local bank

    What we need is a local bank that has free parking and as is open when I am not working.

    We are getting ripped off by the banks my bank has just closed the two local towns banks.

    I now have to travel 25 miles to nearest, they have just put me on email statements and now dividends for first time in a couple of years. If everything is online I might as well get a totally online bank, so I'm moving.

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