Industry News

Study paints dismal picture of Mumbai's call centres - Sept 23rd 2009

India’s emergence as the world’s back office has come at a heavy social cost, says a recent Mumbai University thesis that has painted a rather dismal picture of Mumbai’s call centres.

The explosive growth of call centres has created a sub-culture quite alien to India, surmised researcher Joyce Thomas who spent four years collecting information from people working in these modern version of sweatshops.

She found a world replete with extra-marital affairs, heavy partying and drug abuse.

The cross section of workers surveyed were more likely to be involved in live-in relationships and had fewer qualms about changing sexual partners than the general public.

While their attitude to sex and marriage may not be different from liberal views held in other parts of the world, the paper says that the new work place created for the first time in the country a group of young people with ideas quite radical to conventional Indian mores.

BT’s plan for UK call-centre jobs runs into trouble - Sept 1st 2009

It was supposed to save British jobs and boost a demotivated workforce, but a plan by BT to bring back thousands of call-centre jobs to the UK from India looks set to backfire. British workers, it seems, are unwilling to cover the same hours as their Indian peers.

The telecoms group, which shed 15,000 jobs last year and is planning a further 15,000 cuts this year after a dire performance by its IT division, said last month that it was preparing to move at least 2,000 call centre jobs. The plan, it said, was aimed at preventing compulsory job cuts, adding that it had a responsibility, in spite of its troubles, to find work for its permanent staff in the UK.

Yet, however good its intentions, the plan has hit trouble amid fears from British workers about the hours that they would be required to work to cover the shifts met in India. Unions are concerned that employees could be forced to change their hours to meet the level of coverage provided on the sub-continent, which is 4½ hours ahead of the UK. The rota changes could involve working on Saturdays and Sundays and until 11pm and, they said, it was unfair to expect employees, especially those with families, to adopt such unsociable hours.

BBC Watchdog Customer Service Report - May 4th 2009

BBC Watchdog reports that customer service is getting worse, and it comes as no great surprise that company helplines and call centres are the worst offenders.

The results from the Watchdog questionnaire are clear. Nearly three quarters said that customer service is getting worse - 5,169 of you. Just 437 thought it was getting better and the rest said it was about the same.

Just 28 people told us they never experience poor customer service and around half, well over 3,000 people said they came across it every single week.

Sarah Willingham said she wasn't surprised by this result. "I think what's happening is that businesses now are seeing customer service as something that costs them lots of money, like training, customer service is the same thing and so they're outsourcing it. They're not focusing on it at all."

So what do we do about all that bad service? It used to be that the British didn't like to make a fuss. But has that all changed?

Nearly half of the people who took part in the online questionnaire said that when they get bad service they do nothing. They take it on the chin and leave it at that.

Read more here...

India phone centre cheat stole Brit IDs - January 20th 2009

The records of hundreds of Britons were being scoured by police last night over a potentially huge con at an Indian call centre.

Manager Edward Burn is accused of using the identities of UK customers of insurance giants Aviva to make bogus claims, paid out to cronies in London. The 30-year-old is said to have admitted swindling £56,900 — but that was from just 12 customers and could be the tip of an iceberg.

Burn had been at the EXL Service in Noida, Delhi, since March 2004 and is believed to have confessed to raiding accounts for TWO YEARS. Cops fear other British firms whose accounts are managed there may have been hit too. Head of police Ashok Kumar Chaturvedi said yesterday: “As this has been going on for two years we suspect a much bigger financial fraud to British customers.” Read more at the Sun website...

Call handler sent amorous texts - January 9th 2009

A BT call handler in India has been disciplined after sending amorous text and voicemail messages to a customer.
The female customer from Portsmouth, who does not wish to be identified, went on to the company's website to set up a new landline last month. She received a phone call and gave her details but soon began receiving text messages from the operator saying he was "attracted" to her voice. Read more at the BBC website...

Indian call centre worker 'froze customer's account and changed his identity' as revenge for having service criticised - October 30th 2008

Phoning a bank's call centre can be a frustrating experience. So after he had to deal with a 'rude and arrogant' operator, George Bates felt justified in registering a complaint. As he took part in a follow-up survey to monitor customer satisfaction Mr Bates gave the lowest scores he could. It was the start of a costly nightmare.
When he called the Abbey the next day, carpenter Mr Bates was unable to access his account for 'security reasons', despite correctly giving his date of birth. He was told to visit his local branch but was unable to do so because he was working. Then a hole-in-the-wall machine swallowed his cash card.
When the worried 23-year-old finally got to his local branch he was horrified to discover his identity had been changed to that of a Ugandan divorcee ten years his senior. But the trouble did not stop even after that was corrected.
Read more at the Daily Mail website...

Stressed Indians leave call centres - September 29th 2008

A 23-year-old man, barely out of college, has been recovering from a heart attack in hospital. The doctor's diagnosis: modern lifestyle - stress and odd hours of work. He works at a call centre in Mumbai.

Alarmed? His colleagues at the call centre where he works are. Says one of his best friends and colleague: "I'm leaving. Have been planning to for sometime. "As soon as I get another job, even if it's less paying, I will leave this industry for good."

The youth of India seem to have fallen out of love with the call centre industry. Even before the impact of the economic crisis could be felt on India's $11bn business process outsourcing industry, which gets 70% of all the outsourced work from the US, it was in the grip of a crisis of its own. Several companies, mostly smaller ones unable to maintain international standards, have shut down in Mumbai and Delhi.

Call centre Romeos threaten India's fight against Aids - September 28th 2008

A new breed of "call centre Romeos", seducing women as they work long night shifts together, has been identified as the latest threat in India's battle against the spread of Aids.

In recent years, telephone call centres have emerged as a symbol of the new, modernised India. Educated, English-speaking young people earn salaries unimaginable to their parents as they deal with customers and clients on the other side of the world. Equally unimaginable to the older generation are the opportunities for casual sex afforded by working overnight in the cramped conditions of many call centres. But for all their schooling and seemingly modern ways, many of these young people have little education about the danger of Aids and the way the HIV virus is spread, experts say.

UK one of most expensive contact centre locations - June 20th 2008

The UK is among the most expensive locations to have a contact centre, according to Datamonitor.

The UK takes its place alongside the Netherlands and France as the most expensive places for call centre suppliers to locate services. Offshore destinations such as Colombia, Philippines and India are the least expensive.

In its Trends in Global Contact Center Outsourcing Pricing and Attrition report, the analyst said the UK is among the three most expensive in terms of price per agent per hour.

Peter Ryan, head of contact centre outsourcing analysis at Datamonitor, said these suppliers also face problems recruiting the right staff in the UK.

"Many cite an inability to find contact centre agents of a high calibre, and are frustrated at their unwillingness to stay in their role over an extended period of time. The result is an erosion of margin or higher costs being passed back to the client."

Offshored Helpdesks provide poor service - May 7th 2008

Customer service levels suffer hugely when IT help desks are offshored, according to a report into the outsourcing produced by industry analyst Gartner.

Offshore delivery of IT-focused customer service can yield savings as high as 40 per cent, but Gartner warns that doing so can lead to ‘significant customer dissatisfaction’. Read more at www.callcentre.co.uk...

Lifestyle problems for staff in Indian call centres - April 26th 2008

Indians may have taken over three-quarters of the world's call-center jobs, but they've also taken on the stresses of those jobs: weight gain, depression, boredom and, often, relationship troubles. The combined effect of sleep deprivation, alcohol, cigarettes, junk food and a sedentary lifestyle at the keyboard "is killing people," said Vamsi, who has since left his job as a call-center worker for an American computer firm in Hyderabad. Read more at www.crmbuyer.com...

Google does voice recognition

When Google gets in on the act, you know it's serious.

Call Centre Operators Suffer Too - March 4th 2007

We all know how frustrating it can be having to contact a call centre. But have you ever given a thought for the person on the other end of the line? Regular complaints and the anger of frustrated members of the public can leave call centre staff emotionally drained and less able to respond appropriately to customer calls.

A study by Dr Gail Kinman, a senior lecturer at the University of Bedfordshire, found that emotional labour - the extent to which employees fake and suppress their emotions - creates stress that can extend into the home. Read more...

Hanging on the Telephone - BBC - The One Show - October 2007

Call centres seems to be a topic that divides the nation, and which can provoke extreme reactions from people – not just those serviced by call centres, but from the staff working in them too.

They are stressful environments to work in - abuse is a regular part of the job, and a study undertaken for the Health and Safety Executive shows the risk of mental health problems is higher for people working in this industry.

Job satisfaction is low for call centre workers and it seems customers don’t like the whole experience much either. Read more on the BBC web site...

Site Menu

Product Info

Company Info