By Andy McCue, 13 November 2003 16:55
NEWS Indian staff are not only cheaper but offer a better quality of service than UK call centre workers the head of the national rail enquiries service has told MPs.
The train operating companies have come under fire this week from the union Amicus for plans that could lead to up to 1,700 rail enquiry call centre jobs being offshored to India.
The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) told silicon.com earlier this week that it had not set an offshore agenda and that the location of its call centres would be a matter for its suppliers.
But Chris Scoggins, CEO of the national rail enquiry service, told a House of Commons transport select committee yesterday that a pilot project in India had already been "very successful".
"The quality is as good as, or in some cases better than the quality of our existing service," he said.
Scoggins denied accusations from one MP that Indian salaries being almost £10,000 cheaper is the main reason behind the move.
According to a report in the Hindustan Times the rail enquiries pilot project began eight weeks ago, with some calls being routed to Bangalore where they are answered by Indian graduates on a sixth of the salary of UK call centre operators.
The current service is run by BT, Serco, First Information and ClientLogic with 1,700 staff in call centres in Newcastle, Plymouth, Derby and Cardiff. ATOC is due to make an announcement on the new contract in early December.
Comments
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1. anonymous
With the continued outsourcing of call centres to India I have noticed that my cold-call sales pitches have become less hateful. The callers are immeasurably more polite and it's nice to hear someone with a decent grasp of the English language for a change. It's difficult to be sympathetic when things appear to have improved so drastically.
2. anonymous
I find it hard to disagree really. I currently bank with HSBC and calling their telephone services is amazingly quick. I can put up with the parrot-fashion speak as it simply gets the job done. Just about every callcentre I call in the UK is either understaffed or undertrained. If the end user finally gets a better service out of it then it can't be bad. The unions have to wake up to the fact that this is the changing face of the world and no amount of shouting and screaming is going to change things. I am speaking a bit from experience here as I was made redundant from a senior Telecoms position earlier this year. No one is safe!
3. anonymous
We as a business have done the same, the service is excellent and the staff in Indian are pround of the what they are doing - and the cost of operating the centre is lower.
4. Graham Thomas
What can you say!! there is many reasons we should not do this sort of thing but there is also the fact of simple economics, I personally find it anoying and difficult to converse with somebody without a clear english accent, maybe its because I am Welsh though :)
I was asked yesterdat to supply a phone system based in the uk connected to uk lines and send teleworker phones out to the check republic just because they can pay them less.
5. Kay Beswick
Yep. This sounds almost as good an idea as changing 192 to 118 numbers, several of which are 'overseas' call centres. That has improved the service no end........ Please excuse my heavy sarcasm at yet another cost cutting, short sighted action.
6. anonymous
What a load of rubbish.
They may be cheaper, but in my experience they are certainly not better. You only have to experience the new 118 services which aren't a patch on the old 192.
It is a shame that everything seems to be driven by what it costs, and not the quality of service given.
7. Chris Clark
Of the four or five UK based call centres I use as a customer, the worst, - by a very long way - is BT's Billing service. 20 to 90 minutes delay before answer was my experience of 5 calls last fortnight. When I do speak to someone they are polite, informed, and resolve the query. BT's call centre is quite clearly understaffed and the staff themselves are very aware of it and the poor impression it gives.
And here is the rub.
Indian staff, who are just as intelligent as anyone else, are available to answer calls in greater numbers for the same cost. Of course the service is better - the public get their phonecalls answered.
Sorry - the Indian community in Mumbai and Delhi get my full support.
However, should tactics based on understaffing be used to justify driving outsourcing out of this country, these are detrimental to the professional skills of the UK's call centre teams. That is highly unfair to these teams, and something Amicus should be very publicly getting their teeth into.
In the medium term, the trend is likely to continue. Maybe the UK call centre staff may need to consider different futures - with the skills careerminded call centre individuals have, good alternatives will always exist.
8. Bill Jackson
Why dont we support our own industry while there is something to support,
or do we do our weekly shop in India as well. WAKE UP....
9. anonymous
Having spent far too long on phone calls with Indian call centre workers who are quite frankly clueless, all I can say is that this is at best nonsense.
10. anonymous
After seeing the BBC TV programme last night alleging that 25,000 women are burnt in Dowry crimes a year in Delhi alone and the charge from the Women's Group on the programme that women's rights are regularly being abused and ignored, I suggest that Amicus concentrate on ensuring that Indian Contractors for these services have to be contracted to fully follow all the employment and health and safety legislation required in the UK and let's see whose service is the most cost effective then!
11. Nick Cole
How does this rail chief gauge better service? Is it because we the public get good local knowledge and awareness of the vagaries of rail timetables or is it because it is cheaper for him to provide it?
The measure is public acceptance not his budget bottom line.
Since British Rail etal have had many many decades to do it and still don't get it right how do they think that people 5 or 6000 miles away will understand the system any better?
My experience of remote outsourced help is to give up, the people on the end of the phone are less use than the one here and at least UK based people REALLY understand the language, dialects, terminology and business law. Unfortunately for these companies they have forgotten why call centres are so often used and that is that the product or service they provide has failed! Get the basics right and call centres will reduce in scale.
Or is this the usual attempt at covering up inadequacies at a senior board level and refusal to admit mistakes?
Call centres are not a cost burden but a way of keeping customers that the marketing budget has already attracted. In most cases however, despite the best attempts of the poor souls receiving the abuse they become ways of losing customers. Directors are too wrapped up in their own importance to realise that it is cheaper to keep a customer than it is find a new one.
12. anonymous
Quality service retains quality business, in my experience outsourcing deals with quantity. I work for a large insurer who has recently outsourced to asia and a prime example was a colleague who telephoned for a quote for his Kawazaki 1000 motorcycle and was asked how many doors it had - you will not be surprised to know he politely ended the conversation there. Increasingly the population is of a greater average age and those clients not only have more disposable income but are more demanding when it comes to a quality service. The instances when most customers need help will most certainly not be covered by the 'scripts & situations' trained into these call centres. I retained happy customer is more economical than 2 new customers who do not stay around after the first year.
13. anonymous
Its funny to see Americans send agent feedback like this: "I dont want my fone calls ansered by eliphent hurders from India. I want somone who can speek proper English".
Dont they realize that their own English is sometimes considerably worse than the Indian answering the call?
What about people who only want to speak to "an American" as a matter of principle, even if the guy answering the call is perfectly clear? What about this one caller who insisted not only on speaking to an American but some one from the South!!!
Scripting happens because they dont want to invest enough time and money in training their agents about the company as a whole. Another reason for low performance sometimes could be that call centers are paid per call, which leads to an emphasis on volume as opposed to quality.
14. anonymous
We as a business have done the same... I can't believe you are delivering a better service. As a customer who purchases alot of IT hardware, software and consultancy services I have never had a good experience with S P E L L I N G every word, name, address or technical term. I just switch suppliers the mintue I feel I'm getting a distant "support".
I say to IT purchasers, TI Managers and IT customers Vote "with your feet"
15. anonymous
When all the jobs in the UK have been outsourced to India, who is going to pay income tax in the UK? So where will the government get the money to pay unemployment benefit?
16. Steve Pilling
call centres = frustration- try and find out what platform your train will be arriving at as I did once (had lots of luggage)- no chance the call centre hadn't got a clue - solution just stagger from platform to platform till you find the right one!!! - thanks