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By Jo Best, 17 September 2003 16:52

NEWS Arguments against offshoring have hit the headlines this week, with activists picketing a US conference on sending business abroad but this public outcry far from represents the general mood. The results of a MORI poll, commissioned by the Gauteng Economic Development Agency, announced yesterday that 94 per cent of Britons are either oblivious (26 per cent) to the trend, or are more than happy (66 per cent) to have their customer services queries answered by a call centre abroad – as long as it's answered quickly and professionally. So while offshoring may be fine with the British public and a firm favourite among CEOs looking to trim costs, it seems that overseas outsourcing may not be the source of quite the they might have hoped for. Although offshoring is principally known as a way to save money, companies could be shelling out billions more than they need every year to move business support overseas. According to research from software company Transversal, as much as half of the £7bn spent on offshoring call centres could be wasted, with a large proportion of phone calls being routed to customer service staff unnecessarily. The company believes businesses could save more by filtering customer queries through an automated system on the web – reducing traffic to call centres by up to 80 per cent. Dee Roche of Transversal said in a statement: “We are finding that when call centres look more closely at the queries their agents are handling, a large proportion of calls and emails are from customers asking the same thing, but in a different way. In fact because the work is so repetitive even the Indian call centre industry is already starting to experience its own problems with agent retention and recruitment.”