Indians to coach U.K. call center executives

By agencies   |   Thursday, 10 August 2006, 19:30 IST
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LONDON: In what could be called a trend reversal, Indian call center experts would be now training British workers on how to run message-handling services. Britain’s first Indian owned call center that has opened in Belfast is understood to have adopted this drift. ICICI One source, which has 8,000 employees in India aims to generate 1,000 jobs in Northern Ireland over the next two years. The firm’s British clients hail mainly from financial and telecom industries. Says Matthew Vallance, the European MD of ICICI, “This is not about moving work from India to the U.K, it’s about the growth and expansion of our business. People are very familiar with the Irish accent and we think it will work very well.” Last week, the Indian instructors resumed work and an opening batch of about 60 students was trained. Critics seem unhappy about the idea and predicted that Indians training the Brutish call center executives is unlikely to work considering the past history. There were umpteen cases of persons complaining of long waits and difficulty in understanding accents registered in the past, they said.