Despite the crunch, still call centre growth at Barclays

An interesting story on Finextra that Barclays are to create over 200 new call centre jobs in Liverpool.  A lot of reasons why this is interesting. One is that with the credit crunch it's good to see that the world hasn't ended and that banks are still going about (some) of their usual business. The other aspect that I thought interesting is that these are primarily outbound agents.  The blog looked at the problems Barclays has been having with outbound in my last post (see "Barclays, silent calling & we've been here before... ") and I suspect that Barclays was determined to get this fixed. I know in my last post I was dubious about how important reputational risk was. I have revised that judgement, and I'd now say 'reputational risk is really important if you upset voters and there is a chance the government may become your largest shareholder'. I know Barclays has so far not needed any assistance from the UK government, but I can see that it would be tactful (as well as good business) not to fight with Ofcom or any other government body in the near future....