Companies Move Away from Outsourcing Call Centre Handling to India
Smart companies are moving away from outsourcing call centre handling to India before customers hang up on doing business with them for good. It's understandable from a business perspective why many companies moved towards outsourcing to places like India in the first place. Labour costs are significantly cheaper in those regions allowing for greater cost savings, typically in the region of 37% - 55%, creating a powerful incentive for companies to outsource their call centre jobs. When all is said and done however, companies are learning that these cheap labour forces are having a more negative impact on their business than the cost savings they produce.
UK consumers have reversed the trend of outsourcing call centres to India by simply taking their business elsewhere. They have made companies aware of the many problems they have encountered highlighting a definite language barrier focusing on heavily accented, scripted answers unrelated to their original questions. Poor communication is rampant and customer dissatisfaction with companies outsourcing call centre jobs to India has risen sharply. Because of this we're now seeing a trend, primarily from the finance and telecoms sectors, to bring customer service jobs back to the UK.
The inability of Indian workers to communicate with UK customers in answering their questions and handling complaints isn't the only concern though. The security of sensitive customer information that is collected by companies has come under heavy scrutiny in recent years. Threats posed to customer identities, credit card numbers, and other sensitive data exposed in the media is a number one concern for many UK customers.
Frustrated customers fearing their identity may be stolen have taken their custom elsewhere rather than do business with companies outsourcing their call handling. This is causing a rapid evaporation of profits for companies that previously believed outsourcing to India would be a profit busting proposition. Companies pay attention when their bottom line is hit with the realization that profits made through the sales to existing customers far outweigh the savings achieved by outsourcing customer service jobs to cheap labour sources.
As more companies move away from outsourcing call handling to India, trust, loyalty, and profits previously lost will be regained and new jobs will be created in the UK for the many workers that lost out in the outsourcing revolution.Let's hope that companies still outsourcing call centre handling to India will pay heed to what UK consumers are saying and move their operations back to the UK. But you have to ask the question, has the damage already been done? Would you sign on the dotted line with a company who outsourced their call centre jobs?
