Alarm bells for Indian call centres

Friday, 16 January 2004, 20:30 IST
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LONDON: Latest government-sponsored research has revealed that service from British call centres is significantly better than from their counterparts in Bangalore and Delhi. Immediately after the research finding was announced, the white-collar union Amicus HAS demanded an urgent meeting with Patricia Hewitt, secretary of state for trade and industry, over the growing pace of British jobs being outsourced to India. Amicus insisted the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), which commissioned the study from the research firm Contactbabel, disclose full details of all work it is doing on the controversial subject. Steve Morrell, author of the report, said the difference was a "shock," especially as Indian staff typically worked six hours a week longer than those in Britain. Morrell said: "Indian agents are very quick to pick up the phone, but it takes them more than a minute longer to complete each call, and more than a third of customers have to call back later to get a satisfactory resolution to their inquiry. This can be extremely frustrating. "These figures show what we all knew anyway - businesses moving their call centres to India are doing it to save their salary bill, not to improve their quality of service, regardless of what they say. "It's hard to ignore salary savings like these, but if customers get a worse service and end up going to a competitor with a call centre in the UK, then these cost savings will soon disappear." Following pressure from unions as well as from the business community, the DTI agreed to hold a summit to discuss the impact of outsourcing. Amicus wants Hewitt to make herself available before that meeting, on February 2, to hear its views. David Fleming, the national secretary of Amicus, said: "We already know the answer to any survey that the government has commissioned and so do the British consumers. "Services will suffer, cost savings will not be transferred to the consumer, poor business decisions will be made in pursuit of short-term cost savings and company brands will be damaged by outsourcing." The study by Contactbabel found British call centres answer 25 percent more calls an hour than those in India. The result conflicts with the line taken by companies that have moved hundreds of jobs, which claim the standard of work in the East is the same or even superior to that in the UK. HSBC, which announced the largest project to transfer jobs - moving 4,000 primarily to India by 2006 - has said its workers in centres such as Hyderabad, offer service levels very similar to those in its British centres. The trend, which is being pursued by Lloyds TSB, Barclays, Abbey and companies in other sectors, has caused consternation among unions, who fear a repeat of the way the UK's manufacturing industry was wiped out in the 1980s, when about three millions jobs migrated to the Far East. Meanwhile, the Nationwide building society is bucking the trend for shifting call centre jobs overseas. It pledged to stay in Britain and back this up with plans for a new centre in Sheffield. It is also making a "substantial investment" in its other established call centres. Nationwide is Britain's biggest building society and employs a total of almost 800 people at its two main call centres in Swindon and Northampton, which typically handle 18,500 phone calls and emails a day. Both are being officially reopened after refurbishment programmes designed to make them "better environments in which to work". In November 2002 the society set up a small call centre in Swansea, and it expects to open another in Sheffield in the summer. This will initially employ about 60 people, rising to 180 over three years. Philip Williamson, Nationwide's chief executive, said the society had strong links with the areas in which it operated and had no plans to desert these local communities. "Call centres abroad may suit some of our competitors but they are not the right option for Nationwide, and we are aware of some commentators' concerns that some countries may not have the same level of data protection for consumers that exists in the UK," he said. The announcement was welcomed by the Nationwide staff union.
Source: IANS
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