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Saj
My name's Sajid and I'm a Team Leader at first direct.
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Saj
We're actually the heart of the business which is Sales and Service, so when customers call through we're the first people they talk to.
And I'm responsible for one of those teams.
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Saj
When people phone us at first direct they go straight through to a person and we try to help them the best we can.
It's mainly things like checking balances, making bill payments, moving away from the traditional going to a branch and making a bill payment over the counter. We can do everything on the telephone for them.
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Saj
I look after the quality aspect of our calls and I monitor my team to see if we are actually providing customers with the best service. We do go on to the telephones as well and it is still quite nice to still be in touch with our customers and still know what's going on.
Somebody who starts on my team is given the title 'Customer Sales Representative'. It's a great place to start because when you start at the heart of the business, to progress on to other departments, you know what we expect at the forefront and what you're having to deal with.
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Saj
I've been at first direct for about 4 1/2 years now. I just started part-time on 15 hours a week and it was great - I worked Sunday, Monday and Tuesday evenings. So I was at university at the time, so it worked really well. And it was just very flexible. My favourite part of the job is the buzz and the motivation. There's some great people that work at first direct. I'm happy to come into work - it's welcoming. You come in through those doors and it actually does say - welcome. I don't many corporations that do that sort of thing, but that really makes you feel good.
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Jasmine
My name's Jasmine and I've been at first direct for about 3 years now. I currently work in the Lending Department. I started off in the Call Centre and worked my way up to Lending Sales 2 and I'm really, really enjoying it.
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Jasmine
It's being able to have a really good chat with the customer to find out their needs and what I can do to help them.
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Jasmine
I joined here because, as a working mum, you do need to accommodate your children and first direct have an on-site nursery - it's fantastic.
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Jasmine
Kaitlin's been at nursery now since she was about 6 months old and she's grown so much. You can really see the confidence come out in them with the words they use, knowing how to spell and count their numbers, so again it gives me great confidence to go to work knowing that she is learning at such a young age.
Do you like it here Kaitlin? You make lots of friends here don't you?
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Kaitlin
I made you a hedgehog.
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Jasmine
You made me a hedgehog today - oh thank you very much.
Kaitlin is starting school in September. I know that she will do really well because of what she's learnt from this nursery.
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Jasmine
We see first direct as being a family and there's a great atmosphere here - everybody all pulls in together, really works as a team. If you look around everybody is always smiling - it's a really, really great place to work. I love it.
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Jasmine
Well done - that's fantastic - can I keep this to take home?
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Joanna
My name's Joanna and I'm a Foreign Services Representative and I work for first direct.
You feel part of the family at first direct. We're given so many benefits. I don't know of any companies who have an on-site masseuse. It can be extremely busy in various departments and being able in your lunch hour to just come and have maybe a 15-minute or even a half an hour massage must benefit you. You must go back feeling relaxed and obviously that then will come through on your calls and will come through in the work and, you know, everything that you're doing there.
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Joanna
Customers are transferred to us from the Call Centre. We deal with any transfers that are going overseas, abroad, any payments that customers need to make. Customers don't have to go into their bank to do that; they don't have to wait in queues.
We also deal with same day transfers in the UK, foreign cheques, foreign drafts, travel orders.
They can just give us a call. We're here at the end of the phone. I love it. I love the Foreign Services Department.
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Joanna
I did actually speak to one of our customers whose wife was in India and she was waiting for medical treatment. Now in order for her to have the medical treatment, he had to get money over there to pay for it. Now at that particular time India could take anything up to 6 weeks. We made sure that we followed the payment en route and by doing this it meant I had to call HSBC in India to make sure they'd got the payment, then obviously speak to someone there and stay in contact with them and liaise with them and make sure that the draft got issued straight away so that this lady could receive her medical treatment. It isn't all about selling. It isn't all about oh we want loans, we want mortgages, we want this, we want that, we want the other. I think at first direct we do put the customer first.
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Amanda
My name's Amanda and I'm a Trainer at first direct.
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Amanda
We've got 2 Call Centres, one in Hamilton which we share the premises with HSBC and one down in Leeds which is in a place called Stourton and a place in Hamilton. I've been in Learning Development for about 8 years. I take new trainees through induction training when they join first direct, either part time or full time employees. I also train internal staff as well.
The room we're in just now is one of the training rooms. At the moment we're training induction, the guys are 5 weeks into their induction course.
They find out about all the products that we offer and they do a bit of sales training as well. They learn how to communicate and we do lots of team building and different things like that.
It's lots of fun training at first direct as people get to know each other and become one little team. We make the training fun because if you have fun when you're learning, then you're more likely going to remember the information.
The guys get involved - it's really interactive. We use a lot of accelerated learning techniques as well. We've got lots of music playing and we've got lots of colour and lots of laughter in the games so it's an enjoyable experience.
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Amanda
One of the mnemonics that we use is called LARD and it stands for listen, acknowledge, respond and don't take it personally.
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Amanda
My favourite part in my job is meeting different people. I find it really interesting. Everybody's always buzzing and smiling and always saying 'hello' and you never leave feeling bad, you always leave feeling good and you're always happy to come here to work the next day - it's just got that feeling about it.
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Amanda
It's unique. It's innovative. It's creative. It's different and I just love the whole philosophy behind it. I love working for first direct.
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