Delta flies its call centre out of India

Delta Air Lines is to close one of its offshore call centres in India but will not comment on the reasons why, according to newspaper reports.

Specifically, the airline, which is fighting the threat of bankruptcy, would not say whether the closure was in response to an online survey of its customers asking if they would be willing to pay a fee to speak to a US-based agent instead of one in India.

The survey was sent this summer to frequent Delta flyers but, according to Associated Press, a Delta spokesperson said the company has no plans to charge customers who want to speak to US call centre agents. But Delta refused to rule out the possibility of introducing such a call fee in the future.

Sykes Enterprises, which manages the Delta call centre that will be closed, also declined to comment.

Delta has three call centres in India and outsourcing the functions has saved the struggling airline $25m a year, although 11 of its call centres remain in the US.

A separate report this week, Mapping Europe's Offshore Spending Impact, from Forrester Research predicts UK and Irish spending on offshore IT services will rise by a CAGR of 29 per cent to €2.8bn in 2009, from €768m this year – although offshoring still only represents 1.2 per cent of the European region's total IT services spend.

Not surprisingly, India is set to remain the preferred offshore location for many years yet, taking 87.5 per cent of the UK and Ireland's offshore spending in 2004 but dropping to 80 per cent by 2009 as competitors such as China make up ground.

UK application developers will be one of the hardest hit by offshoring, with almost half of the growth in their market between now and 2009 to be whittled away by work moving overseas.