Costly calls aren’t right – why TSB has ditched 0845 numbers

Hello, my name’s Caroyln Ferguson and I work with Paul. I’m the Telephony Director at TSB and I will help Paul answer some of the questions.

Paresh, thanks for your suggestion. 0345 numbers are included in inclusive minutes for both landlines and mobile phones, while 0800 numbers are not included in inclusive minutes for mobiles. We want to make sure everyone can call us on a local rate number from anywhere in Britain – not a high rate 0845 number. Thanks.

The term local rate number should have been phased out in 2004. Some companies and phone providers should have been taken to task by ofcom if they still use them in advertising as the term is now misleading.

Hello. 0345 numbers are treated in the same way as 01 and 02 numbers – this is what we mean by a ‘local rate number’. Our research shows that most people don’t know what 0345 means though, so please help spread the word! Thanks.

@alfa – 03 numbers were introduced as non-geographic numbers priced at a geographic rate. That is their raison d’être, so their future is certain.

Hello alfa. We want to make sure customers can call us without getting penalised by high rate 0845 numbers. 0345 numbers are treated the same as 01 and 02 numbers, so they are included in inclusive minutes on both landlines and mobiles, while 0800 are not free on mobiles. Thanks.

“To manage your money please call Telephone Banking on 0345 xxx xxxx.Our opening hours are 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you need to call us from abroad, or prefer not to use our 0845 number, you can also call Telephone Banking on 0203 xxx xxxx .” was taken from

http://www.tsb.co.uk/accessibility/other_banking_options.asp

The pdf I mentioned is http://www.tsb.co.uk/media/tsb/pdfs/telephone_banking_user_guide.pdf

Enjoy

Hi William. Thanks for your message – I’ve passed on your comments to my team to look into. The link you’ve shared with us is now updated and we are looking at updating the PDFs shortly.

With regards to external (non-TSB) websites that list our telephone numbers via their own high-rate phone numbers, we are aware some websites that have no association with TSB do this. We can look into whether this can be changed but rest assured we do our best to ensure customers are provided with the correct number, including running Google ads that direct people to the right location. We want as many people as possible to know they can now call us on 0345 instead of 0845, so please spread the word. Thanks again for your feedback!

Thanks for the reply Carolyn,a couple of days of silence after my post I sent almost the same info to your facebook team, and they replied they’d pass the info on, so I’m guessing that’s how/when it got fixed.

Going by the sheer number of pdfs that are “wrong” compared to the number of web pages mentioning 0845 , the pdfs weren’t in the original scope.

Hi Carolyn, Can you confirm whether or not all the webpages have been amended to show 0345 number yet ( I know the pdfs are still wrong). It’s just I’ve found another 0845 and there;s no point raising it as an outstanding issue if the work has been “completed” it . Regards.

FYI most pages would now appear to be correct.

Thanks for getting back Carolyn. Here’s the offending webpage

http://www.tsb.co.uk/rates_and_charges/non_marketed_product_rates_curr_page.asp

The text in question being “From time to time we may offer Trustcard cardholders discounted rates for balance transfers, for more information contact us on 0845 xxx xxxx”

Not sure how the team is scoping the changes but they might wish to try entering “site:tsb.co.uk 0845” into a search engine. Bearing in mind that search engine results come from the search engines stored copy and so can be out of date so don’t be alarmed when it lists several pages as most of the pages are now correct.

With regard to the directory service websites, I’ve even tried contacting BT and BBC Watchdog but neither seem to be interested. And I’ve been having a long battle with ITV news over one webpage listing 0843 number for energy companies who now almost all use 0800 numbers, that fight has been going on almost 3 months. At least TSB have have been more pro-active so again thank you.

Hi William. Thanks for your support, it is much appreciated!

Regarding the 0845 number you’ve found, we sometimes use third-party suppliers and they may still have 0845 numbers – as in this case.

Since we first announced the intention to replace 0845 with 0345, we’ve been working hard with these suppliers to steadily change their numbers to 0345 too. While we can’t say for certain this will happen, we’ll certainly continue to do our best to persuade them to make the switch with us.

As for TSB, we’ve had to change our numbers in over 9,000 different areas. We have been doing this systematically, as fast as we can. As well as the website, we’ve had to think about ATMs and paper literature – the latter of which has an environmental impact. To minimise this impact, we have phased the updates of our literature (so you may still find the odd 0845 number here and there!), which is ONE of the reasons why we have the message on the old 0845 lines telling people about 0345.
Thanks.

Hi Carolyn, I guess I’m remembering the original TSB Trustcard from years ago. I’m also guessing that the updates to the PDFs will be driven from the updates to the paper literature which is why they’re still outstanding.

And thanks for the responses, its refreshing to have guest post where someone actually engages with the contributors.

FYI I can see find loads of PDFs listing 0845 numbers when doing a google search 🙁

Hi Carolyn , Are you actually asking the number they ring ? I’m a little curious as to how you’ll know if they called an 0843 number or not. As I don’t know which number they’ll route though to.

Hi William, thanks for your question. Our IT systems identify which TSB number our customers have dialled, whether it’s 0345 or 0845 – that’s how we know.

Hi, But can you tell whether that 0345 or 0845 has been routed though an 0843 number, that’s my point. I know you now only use 0345 but believe me there are people out there who won’t know and will believe whatever a search engines lists.

Google “TSB 0843” and you’ll see how many different 0843 numbers these websites are claiming are your customer service number. These sites will get listed without searching for 0843 I’ve just used that to show you the extent of the problem very easily.

Hi William. Our search results relating to our phone numbers do appear very high up on search engines and – as mentioned before – we do also have an ad at the top of Google Search to ensure people are directed to the TSB website. So even though it’s not always possible to know whether a call has been redirected or not, we are confident the overwhelming majority of people searching for TSB’s contact numbers are finding our website and therefore the official numbers.

I agree that not everyone knows about our switch to 0345 numbers yet – some people would have saved our 0845 numbers on their phones, for example. And that is exactly the point we are making – we would like people to spread the word. We also play a message on every single 0845 line to remind people that next time they can use 0345. Our aim is to get to 100% in the future – not 56%.

I understand your concerns and we know the redirecting tactics of some external websites is a challenge for all companies with contact centres. Rest assured I have raised this with my team, even though ultimately we don’t have any direct control over external websites.

Regarding the updates to the website, this should all be complete now, while the PDFs will be updated by mid May. If you can please us know the specific part of the website where you’ve seen an 0845 number, I’ll ask my team to look into it straight away. Thanks.

Carolyn – To get the message across, I suggest putting a notice at the top of the home page on the website.

It’s unrealistic to expect everybody who wants to contact the bank to look the number up on a website. For many people they will look at a previous statement or letter from the bank, look it up in a phone book, or have it in their calling list [whether in paper or digital form]. I think a 56% contact rate via 0345 is fairly good at this stage but it will take a long time before you reach 100% via 0345. My bank [Nationwide] is able to send personalised e-mails to their customers [quoting their home postcode as a security check] so perhaps a secure e-mail to every customer for whom the TSB has an e-mail address might spread the word.

Thanks for your suggestion. I’ll pass it onto our web team!

Hello John. You’re right that some people will have saved our number elsewhere, such as in a phone book or on their phone. That’s why every time someone calls one of our old 0845 lines, they’ll hear a message that says they can call us on 0345 the next time they ring. Slowly but surely, we will get to 100%! Thanks.

Hello Mrs Smithson – thanks for your comment. What we meant was that TSB is a national bank with a reach across Britain, that’s what we meant when we said “TSB is Britain’s only national bank to make this change in full”. Carolyn

Got a call back from AXA complaints – apparently along the line I went out of the TSB loop to AXA but we were never told! Sorry, yes but ……