By Andy McCue, 27 November 2006 13:40
NEWS
Online insurance company eSure will bring its offshore call centre work in India back to the UK from February next year.
eSure started using offshore Indian call centres in 2004 and currently has 100 agents with an unnamed third-party provider in Bangalore and Mumbai.
eSure said it originally moved the work to India as a temporary measure because it was unable to recruit enough staff at its Manchester call centre to cope with the volume of customer calls, and not as a way to save on labour costs.
A spokesman for eSure said even prime time adverts during Coronation Street on ITV couldn't fill the vacancies.
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He told silicon.com: "The pool of people in the Manchester area to fish in reduced dramatically at a time when we were growing dramatically. We had the option to outsource that work or lose the calls but we have never moved a job out to India."
But with headcount at eSure's Manchester call centre now ramping up again and due to reach 600 by January next year, the UK operation will take over the work done by the remaining 100 agents in India by the end of February.
The eSure spokesman admitted there has been some negative feedback from customers using the Indian call centres but said this had nothing to do with the reason for bringing the work back to the UK.
He said: "There are people who don't like talking to Indians and that's unfortunate and that's a problem for the UK. Everything we have had out there has been absolutely fine. We have had an immensely positive experience with very quick and good quality offshore staff."
eSure will have just under 2,000 call centre staff at sites in Glasgow, Manchester and Reigate handling all customer calls once the Indian transition is complete.
Comments
There are 9 comments. Join the discussion
1. Roger Huffadine
I don't mind 'talking' to someone in an Offshore Call centre - Listening, however, can sometimes be a problem. Its to do with accents and what UK ears have been taught to recognise - the older a person is the harder it becomes. Brain physiology contributes to the problem - the older we get the harder it is to train new neural pathways. The other BIG problem with offshore call centres is the lack of support tools - to help the remote workers with things like common name spellings and geography. If you offshore then you need MORE support tools - and sadly few companies realise this and just duplicate the UK tools in the offshore location.
2. anonymous
I will not knowingly deal with companies that use Indian call centres. It's nothing to do with race or discrimination. I find that the different social background leads to a different comprehension and they do not have the same understanding of problems because of this. I also find that Indian accents are sometimes difficult to understand. Also they don't seem to take on the 'customer is right' attitude. Do you gat a lack of understanding coupled to a bad attitude. Highly irritating.
3. Richard
You can tell when you're talking to a genuine Indian call centre:
The staff are polite and keen to help!
Too often, they're let down by poor business processes or lack of information; preventing them from resolving the problem.
Too often, companies use these call centres as a cheap way of barracking their customers.
Also, too many companies use very poor quality international phone circuits. This makes it hard to understand unfamiliar accents.
4. anonymous
I make my living out of outsourcing software development work so you would expect me to be fairly positive about outsourcing. However......In my decade long offshoring experience I have yet to hear a convincing explanation from anyone in the offshore call centre business regarding the legal framework underwhich call centre staff could be prosecuted. The legal framework and infrastructure in most offshore call centres locations is shakey beyond belief, 500 USD being the going rate for a court order in one of the locations were I work. Most locations used for call centres have extradition treaties with UK that are shakey, non existant or don' t recognise e-commerce fraud so it is impossible to extradite any offenders to UK.
5. anonymous
What I fail to understand is why (if not for cost savings) would the company consider sending the business to an Indian call centre when there are many UK call centre businesses that could have been utilised? In my experience it is always the bottom line that dictates strategy and that can be the only reason for sending work overseas. Perhaps the negative feedback has had an effect after all. . . .
6. anonymous
I have always found Indian Call Centre staff to be polite & helpful but I have had difficulty understanding them and, as I'm Irish, I think they probably have had problems understanding me. However, when I used Abbey National Telephone Banking, which seems to use Indian call centres 'out of hours', on at least two occasions I was given instructions about how to use my accounts that subsequently turned out to be incorrect. I no longer use Telephone Banking.
7. Anon Y Mous
NEVER KNOWINGLY - I too NEVER knowingly deal with any company using an offshore (not 'right shore' - please give us some credit!) call centre. MAINLY the operators are NOT incentivised to help, they are only incentivised NOT to escalate problmes to their supervisors. To escalate a problem is to admit failure and they risk their job then. There is NO customer first service ethos. <BR><BR> Poor quality VoIP circuits and unfamiliar accents don't help, but mostly a foreign country does not understand our culture, i.e. name spellings - try to get service when they have orignally input your name incorrectly, then cannot find you afterwards!). <BR><BR>Most companies off-shoring call centres also do NOT pay for training - typically insurance companies who do not explain to their operators how car insurance and details (like Thatcham approved alarms!) effect rates.
8. Gary Gamp
I wasn’t surprised to hear that eSure is bringing its Indian call centre work back to the UK. At the start of the offshoring ‘gold rush’ companies were keen to offshore everything they could as it was a cheap option for labour, but saving money isn’t the only driver for offshoring, other factors need to be considered.
eSure is unlikely to prompt an immediate mass-exodus from India, but it may prompt others in the same position to start thinking about whether the offshore location of their business is right for their company culture and customers. If an ethos of a company is based on providing excellent quality of service but it’s failed to deliver this, then it may be time to re-locate. When examining the pros and cons of offshoring on their business, CFOs need to consider more than just the people cost but whether the customer service provision fits the culture of their business.
Upon hearing the news about eSure many companies may review the full breadth of all their business drivers and the implications of their actions. Companies need to create a balance between saving money, customer satisfaction, and driving productivity and opt for a solution that is a best fit for the company. They have various options to choose from, whether it be offshoring to Ireland, Eastern Europe, China, Russia or insourcing – whatever the right match is for their business drivers.
With limited access to skills and salaries on the increase more companies are moving away from offshoring to India. Will this announcement just be the start of a new nearshoring trend?
Gary Gamp, managing director – services, nscglobal
9. anonymous
problems arise with me when things go wrong with your policy, ie claim, or other problems trying to explain Indian call center that you dont wish to make a claim, it can be time consuming, and make angry, sorted it by getting through to uk head office