Tesco Customer Service Center Visited by Labour Leader

Labour Leader Ed Miliband Visits the Tesco Customer Service Center, Dundee

Labour leader Ed Miliband visited the Tesco Customer Service Center as part of celebrations to mark 100 staff becoming the first group to earn nationally recognised qualifications in their workplace.

Staff at the center, which employs 850 people from its base in Dundee, received a high-profile visit from senior members of the Labour Party to tour the site.

Mr Miliband was accompanied by Iain Gray, MSP and Leader of the Scottish Labour Party, to meet some of the 200-plus candidates who are on track to gain SVQ qualifications in one of four courses offered - Customer Service, Team Leading, Business Administration and Management - as part of a center-wide initiative.

The qualifications give staff the opportunity to gain a recognised qualification while carrying out their day to day role, supported by an SVQ assessor. Five graduation ceremonies will be held over the coming months to award those who have successfully completed their course.

Ahead of the Scottish elections on May 5th, Mr Gray said: "I don't think there is any more important issue in this election than jobs and growing the economy opportunity.

"Tesco is one of the biggest private sector employers in Dundee, so we have come here to talk about how they do that. What I think is interesting is that everybody we have spoken to has talked about the training opportunities they have here, the opportunities to move on and build their career, and I think this is part of the success."

Mr Gray added: "That is the sort of good employment practices we need to see in other employers as well."

As one of the city's largest employers, creating an additional 500 jobs since 2006, Mr Miliband and Mr Gray were also impressed to hear about the center's innovative Homeworking pilot project, which launched last July with 33 staff taking calls from customers from their own home. This number is set to increase to over 100 people working from home by the end of 2011, with the potential to expand to 300 staff by 2014.

The award-winning center, with accolades from CCA, CCF, HR NETWORK and Talking Tayside, also highlighted its charity and community work, having raised £45,000 for CLIC Sargent last year and picking up the "Best Fundraising Team" at the Tesco Staff Fundraising Awards.

Key facts about Tesco Customer Service Centre in Dundee

5 Dundee facts:

18m calls per year
£19m annual wage bill
849 staff
203 SVQ candidates
2m minutes of calls taken in one week in December

Delivering for customers

The center responded to enquiries from 18 million Tesco customers last year. Dundee CSC, with a sister site in Cardiff, handles UK customer queries and has grown to become one of Dundee's largest employers.

People

The diverse workface has people ranging from 16 to 68, with an average age of 34. A third of staff are part-time and the annual payroll of £19m is a major boost to the local economy. Tesco have created an average of 100 new roles each year for the last five years.

Investing and growing

In Dundee CSC the average headcounts for the last 5 years have been:
2006 350
2007 428
2008 550
2009 670
2010 750
2011 849 (current Headcount)

SVQ

203 staff took the opportunity to gain a nationally recognised SVQ qualification. The range of staff taking part goes from Customer Service Manager to Ops Manager. More than 80 staff have already completed. Tesco have three more graduation ceremonies planned for later this year.

Options Training programme

An internal training programme, which is now in its third intake. In total, 27 staff have now completed or are currently completing this course, with 13 of those already having progressed to new positions within the company.

Homeworking - innovation and job creation

In July 2010, Tesco launched an innovative Home working pilot project, employing 33 staff. This number is set to increase to over 100 people working from home by the end of 2011, with the potential to expand to 300 staff by 2014.

Investing in staff

Tesco invested £1.25 million last year in staff learning and development, with the bulk of this going towards staff training and one to one coaching as an investment in customer satisfaction.

Charity work

Over the last 12 months staff at the centre have raised £45,000 for the Tesco Charity of the Year, CLIC Sargent. Company-wide, Tesco raised £7.2m for CLIC, and the Charity Team picked up "Best Fundraising Team" at the Tesco Staff Fundraising Awards, held on April 6th, 2011.

Community work

Staff volunteer their time through a variety of schemes, including mentoring schemes with local schools, colleges and community groups.

Industry leading and award-winning

Tesco have won awards at CCA, CCF, HR NETWORK and talking Tayside for center-wide, individual and team performance, and were named "Best Contact Center for Customer Service" at the European Call Center Awards 2010.

Independently audited

In 2006, Tesco attained Investors in People accreditation, and last year were awarded the prestigious Silver Status from IIP.

Record breakers

Tesco took more than 2,000,000 minutes of calls in just one week - December 6th to December 12th- to listen to all the calls it would take you 3 years and 10 months!

Investing in Scotland

Tesco is Scotland's largest private sector employer with nearly 30,000 staff. In Dundee, Tesco directly employs circa 2,409 people, if you include wider Tayside stores of Arbroath, Monifeith and Forfar, that number increases to 2,889.

Supporting the Scottish economy

Last year Tesco created nearly 2000 jobs in Scotland and sold over £2bn of produce from Scotland in their stores. One local supplier - ScotHerbs of Longforgan - initially supplied a handful of Tesco stores, grew their business to supply all Scottish stores and now supply our UK stores.
 

 

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