CALL CENTRE

One hundred Derby call centre workers might lose their jobs because the boss of National Rail Enquiries believes that low-paid workers in India could be "better educated and more efficient". Chris Scoggins said that another advantage of moving to the subcontinent was the reduced chance of power cuts affecting the service when compared with Britain. The NRE chief executive sparked outrage when he made the claims under cross-examination by the House of Commons Transport Select Committee.

He admitted that moving the service abroad would save the company £25m a year but maintained that the real reason for any move was not profit. He said that call centre jobs for Western companies were popular in the "developing world" because levels of pay were generally better than in other jobs. Because of this, he explained, employees in India were likely to be better educated and could be even more efficient than British workers.

Mr Scoggins said, "Call centre jobs in India attract very high-quality staff with a good education." There are 1,700 people working at call centres in Newcastle, Cardiff, Plymouth and Derby providing the NRE service. The Derby centre, in Great Northern Road, is owned by ClientLogic and 100 of its 500 staff provide the NRE service. The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), which runs National Rail Enquiries Ltd, currently has a shortlist of four bidders for the service, which draws 60 million callers per year.

The shortlist includes BT, First Group and Serco. The identity of the fourth company is not known. Mr Scoggins admitted that all four bidders had indicated that they were considering "outsourcing" up to 50% of the call centres abroad. ATOC will make a decision by April, 2005, when the current contracts run out. David Fleming, secretary for finance of the Amicus trade union, said that the demands for "profit and profit alone" were set to cost Derby 100 jobs.

"There's no way they can demonstrate that the service is going to be better," he said. "I wouldn't trust my next-door neighbour to tell me how to get from New Delhi to Bangalore and I wouldn't expect anyone from India to help me get from London to Crewe."

Capital One tore up its contract with Indian call centre company Wipro Spectramind. Action was taken after Capital One found out that Wipro staff had made unauthorised credit offers, gifts and club membership to customers. "Certain activities were not up to our standards" said a spokeswoman for Capital One.

Angry staff at Amicus, the finance sector union, are calling for an investigation into the case. Wipro, based in New Delhi, is India's largest call centre. Staff were extending the terms of special deals beyond their end dates and offering levels of credit more than would normally be allowed.

Around 600 staff worked on the Capital One account, one of the biggest for the company. So far 30 employees have been sacked, Reuters report. Capital One denies that it will pull out of India altogether. It confirmed that extensive investigations had confirmed that the issue was limited to several individuals at a single site.

Other firms, however have taken some work away from India, including UK based football pools company Littlewoods, computer manufacturer Dell in Texas and investment bank Lehman Brothers. Customers need not worry as this matter, Capital says, did not involved compromised customer data. Several unions are calling for action and have launched an independent commission of enquiry into offshore call centres. They want the UK Government and European Union to force offshoring companies to disclose the country they are calling from.

Foreign call centres are being brought back to the UK. Esure said it was scrapping foreign call centres which follows Powergen and the AA, who have also said they are bringing their phone-banks back to the UK. The companies are responding to their customers, and many more are set to follow. Esure boss Peter Wood said, "The customers do not like it. If you start to damage your reputation, forget whatever trivial money you're saving."

British companies began outsourcing overseas ten years ago, mainly to India but also to Eastern Europe. Bosses were tempted by far lower wages and overheads, and believed that well-educated staff with good English skills would be able to keep callers happy. Operators were even given weekly briefings on EastEnders and Coronation Street plots so they could make smalltalk with callers. The average wage of a call centre agent in Britain is £6.73 per hour, compared to 90p per hour in India.

But despite the financial benefits, the trend is being reversed as companies pay the price for poor customer service. Claudia Hathway, editor of Call Centre Focus magazine, said, "When companies that outsource work to places such as India told British firms that they could make huge savings on salaries, organisations were biting their hands off for them. But what they did not consider was that overseas call centres tend to be heavily scripted, which can be very frustrating. And there are cultural differences and language issues too.

Anne Marie Forsyth, chief executive of the Customer Contact Association, added, "Managers didn't consider what happens at the customer level. Everything from sales, service and complaints are handled by these agents so it's vital firms get it right. There has been criticism that managers didn't understand how call centres work - they thought it was all about answering as many calls as possible. They didn't understand agents were the frontline of contact for their firms and the focus should be on quality." (Source: Daily Mirror, Feb/07)

Next >>>