Nectar loyalty card moves call centre to India

Store loyalty card Nectar has revealed plans to move a chunk of its UK customer service operations to India later this year.

Nectar gives shoppers points every time they make a purchase at the likes of BP, Debenhams and Sainsbury's and allows them to redeem the points at a later date in part payment for goods.

Nectar is owned by Loyalty Management UK (LMUK), which outsources the customer service call centre operation in Newcastle to a company called Sitel.

Around two-thirds of the 120 positions at Newcastle will be offshored to Sitel's 1,600-strong business process outsourcing (BPO) centre in India, with just 40 staff remaining in the UK to handle the more complex customer queries.

A spokeswoman for LMUK told silicon.com it will be a phased migration that will see a pilot run in June, followed by a staged rollout in August and September.

Details of any job losses could not be confirmed, but the LMUK spokeswoman said it hoped to redeploy the affected staff. She also denied that it is a purely cost-cutting move.

"We are aiming to improve the service for customers," she said.