9th January 2008

A blind employee working at BT’s contact centre in Hanley has topped the charts for selling the company’s range of broadband products to consumers – more than doubling the results achieved by his colleagues in the company’s latest monthly poll.

Sundeep Bains, 26, works for Manpower, the company that sources and employs people on behalf of BT. He was supported into work by Remploy, the UK’s leading provider of employment services for people with disabilities and health conditions, who offered assistance with job searching and practical help with the interview process. Remploy works in partnership with Manpower to provide job ready disabled candidates for consideration when vacancies arise.

Initially Sundeep, who lives in Shelton, worked as a BT customer services assistant, but he and Manpower quickly realised that standard voice recognition software could not keep pace with the amount of information Sundeep needed to input onto his computer on behalf of BT’s customers. Working closely with BT, Manpower and Remploy, and funded by a Jobcentre Plus scheme to assess and provide employers and disabled employees with practical and financial help in the workplace, the software was developed further. Using this new bespoke system, Sundeep was then offered a position in sales, where he has quickly proved he can compete with his colleagues.

Zoe Hankey, who is Manpower’s resource manager in Hanley, said, “We worked with a number of organisations so that Sundeep could compete with his colleagues on a level playing field. His overriding desire is to be considered equally but, in sales terms, he’s a top performer!”

Sundeep added, “Over the past year, my employers have made significant investments in time and shown real commitment to me, and they’ve introduced systems to enable me to do my job. My aim is to repay them by helping customers choose the best broadband products and services. I’m determined to stay at the top of my department’s sales chart not just this month, but every month!”

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