By Andy McCue, 4 February 2004 14:20
NEWS Up to half of the UK's national rail enquiries calls will now be handled from India as part of a new £100m contract to be run by BT and Ventura.
The rail enquiries call centre contract has been split equally between BT and Ventura in two five-year deals with the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) starting from 1 April.
The service's annual 50 million calls are currently handled at centres in Newcastle, Plymouth, Derby and Cardiff, but both BT and Ventura will now offshore some of the work.
Ventura will use 500 staff with 300 based in the Dearne Valley, South Yorkshire, and 200 based in Mumbai, India. BT will continue to employ around 500 people and said it was too early to say what the split would be between Newcastle, Derby and Bangalore in India, although "hundreds" will remain in the UK.
A BT spokesman told silicon.com that due to the high turnover of call centre staff most of the positions moved to India would be down to natural wastage and staff turnover rather than redundancies. He also said that if BT had not included an offshore element to bring the cost of its bid down then it would probably have lost the contract and all 500 positions with it.
"The plan is to minimise disruption by moving the work as people leave of their own accord, but a substantial amount of the work will remain in the UK," he said.
The new contracts cover the answering of telephone enquiries about train times and journey planning as well as handling email feedback from the National Rail website and the Welsh-language enquiries service.
Chris Scoggins, CEO of National Rail Enquiries, said the tendering process had been "exhaustive" and "thorough" and complied with European Union procurement rules.
The new contracts will also see a reduction in the numbers of people handling rail enquiries calls. There are currently 1,400 staff which ATOC said equates to 1,200 full-time positions whereas the new operators will be employing just 1,000 people.
An ATOC spokeswoman told silicon.com that the reduction in number of people needed was because of the falling numbers of enquiries to the telephone service and greater use of the internet service, which is run in-house by ATOC.
"The number of calls has gone down and 40 per cent of enquiries are now handled on the internet," she said.
Unions protested back in November that rail operators had a "moral obligation" to British taxpayers to keep the rail enquiries service in the UK.
Comments
There are 14 comments. Join the discussion
1. Karen Challinor
Could someone please tell me exactly which jobs are being created in the UK by this move.
2. anonymous
To be honest who will actully notice any difference
3. Richard Gaines
Look on the bright side - understanding when your train leaves on the phone heavily scrambled by an Urdu accent will probably be no more difficult than understanding the same information similarly scrambled on the station public address system.
4. anonymous
Well, I shall no longer be ringing train enquiries for details. I shall now go and take up time in a queue and ask the person behind the grill at a station, or use the internet.
I would have thought that companies would have taken notice of what happened to one of the banks recently, when they outsourced the call centre to India, and lost a pile of customers in the process to another bank who advertised its call centre remains in Britain.
5. Geoffrey Darnton
More rail off-shoring to India please ... I understand the punctuality of trains in India is far in excess of the punctuality of trains in the UK - despite the fact that we have had more than 150 years of practice at it.
6. anonymous
We (British People) were very sceptical of buying clothes of Asian origin in 70s. Now, most of our clothes are "Made in Asia" and nobody is bothered to check the label as long as quality and Brand are acceptable. Same thing will happen to call centres...if not India, they will be outsourced to South Africa because of cost savings...Business don't run on sentiments...
7. Ken Thompson
Jobless do not create sales. When all the IT work is in India with the call centres and the manufacturing. Most UK businesses will fold. What price sentiment then.
8. Surajit Mukherjee
It is indeed very strange that people in the UK do not realise that even though about 35% of their economy is run by INDIANS, I should say that it is a good opportunity for India to prove to all that the so called "Developed" countries are still dependent!
9. Jon Bentley
It has been announced to staff in the Derby Call Centre that it will close by December 2004, with a loss of 25 positions per month. The BT/Client Logic UK operation will be conducted from Newcastle only.
10. anonymous
Its OK moving call centes offshore but how would a call centre operator in India handle a call from a Welsh man requesting details of train journey from Llanelli to Llangollen, or a Geordie requesting times to Newcastle from Newcastle (Tyneside to Staffs). Even native british residents have problems with regional accents so what chance does a non UK resident have.
11. anonymous
Its OK moving call centes offshore but how would a call centre operator in India handle a call from a Welsh man requesting details of train journey from Llanelli to Llangollen, or a Geordie requesting times to Newcastle from Newcastle (Tyneside to Staffs). Even native british residents have problems with regional accents so what chance does a non UK resident have.
12. Elias Moubayed
I don't have any issues with call centres as long as they get the job done. Almost all my bank account and credit cards queries now routinely go to a call centre in India. What has happened however is that queries take much longer to get through, more often put on hold than before, but the worst part of it all is that the call quality is absolutely atrocious. It is very clear that it is shunted through myriad VOIP type setups to keep costs down, I often hear some kind of echo, there is a lot of clipped speech and often dead space when neither side can hear the other. Bottom line - a very unpleasant experience.
13. Michelle Howe
This has to be the economics of a Mad House, have the idiots have finally taken over the asylum ? No disrespect to those guys out in India but sooner or later THEY will be wanting parity wages with their western counterparts - then what ? Will they be training monkeys to answer calls ?
14. Andy Bishop
Yet more Service Importing (aka Offshoring) by failing British Management. This is a repeat of what happened to the motor industry. It is the bosses who should lose their jobs, not the workers.