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Consumers may have lost trust in offshore outsourcing, but more companies see the advantages beyond the stereotypes.Customer complaints about Powergen have dropped by 78 percent over the past 12 months, according to latest figures from the independent watchdog Energywatch, propelling the company from the very bottom of the satisfaction league for energy providers to second from the top.While clearer bills for the companys six million customers are one part of the equation, the firm has no doubt that the most significant change has been the repatriation of all backoffice operations including call centres from India to the UK.
Whether you choose to believe that widespread dissatisfaction with offshoring comes down to underlying racism which is what BT, a fierce advocate of Indian business process outsourcing BPO, claims or to protectionism over jobs, the fact is that many consumers balk at being put through to Bangalore or Delhi when they want to talk to service providers in the UK.
Over the past 18 months, a significant clutch of highprofile UK companies have pulled out of India among them, Lloyds TSB, Abbey, NatWest, Aviva and Powergen.
Customer pressure
Most have cited consumer pressure around language difficulties or fear of identity theft, but there are growing reports too that the quality of service experienced by customers and clients is, at times, far more patchy than the Indian BPO industry which now faces growing competition from China, the Philippines, Mexico and Brazil would have us believe.
While the firms that have withdrawn from India have won praise for responding to consumer pressure, Mark KobayashiHillary, offshore director of the National Outsourcing Association, believes there is a worrying amount of misinformation involved.
Some bigname financial institutions have been very adept at manipulating the negative headlines over services in India by implying they have withdrawn altogether when what they have actually done is just repatriate their call centres, he says.
While one could agree that there are distinct problems with offshoring a companys voicebased customercontact operations, or indeed cold sales calls, it is a different matter when it comes to IT support.
In the experience of many big telecoms firms, when it comes to helping fix a problem with a computer, the customer is far more interested in what the call centre agent knows which in the case of India is an awful lot than about their accent or where in the world they live, he says.
The truth is that many so called repatriators are strengthening their backoffice operations in India, even if pulling out of call centres earns them good publicity.
Norwich Union, part of the Aviva Global Services Group, has a clear conscience when it comes to its own extensive outsourcing operation in India.
Its HR director, Russell Martin, stresses that, far from being simply a matter of reducing costs, Indian BPO firms now lead the world in terms of their quality of service to clients and customers.
He believes that while there is growing competition from other markets, such as China, India will remain the number one offshore destination for UK firms.
Despite the clear commitment to BPO though, Martin is acutely aware of the negative headlines and says the firm monitors customer attitudes to the issue on a daily basis.
Customers dislike interactive voice response IVR systems where callers are given menu options to choose from so we use the time difference between India and the UK to ensure that more calls are directly answered by agents, he says.
Although a tiny number of customers do complain about overseas call handling, we have had fantastic feedback on the whole, and have found that perceptions about offshoring have shifted as a direct result of the excellent service they have received.
If there were to be any decision taken to offshore elsewhere or to repatriate back to the UK, the HR department would take an absolutely central role.
If Norwich Unions customers are happy though, the same cannot always be said of its workforce. Staff are always very sensitive about the issue of offshoring, but it is very easy for them to hold polarised and illinformed views, says Martin.
BT, which claims to have made savings of between 40percent and 60percent on everything that it has outsourced, has argued that at least some of the consumer resistance to offshoring is thinly veiled racism. It is a point that has been reinforced by Indian call centre staff themselves, who say the abuse they routinely receive from customers is now unacceptable.
Theres a general fear in the UK about discussing your personal banking details with someone 5,000 miles away in a developing country, where the staff may be motivated to sell details to the black market.
He adds, Ironically though, chances are youre more vulnerable to having your personal details chucked in a refuse bin at a call centre in Glasgow than you are to encounter identity theft in Delhi or Bangalore.
Case study, Norwich Union
Norwich Union, part of Aviva Global Services, continues to buck the trend for call centre repatriation with an offshoring operation primarily in India that takes in a range of administrative processes, financial and legal services and IT applications and development, as well as call centres.
The company has 7,000 people in Bangalore at present, 1,600 of whom made the transition from thirdparty partner staff to direct Aviva employees in January. The company says it will repeat the process with a further 1,600 staff during the coming year.
Daytoday management is via a dedicated HR operation in Bangalore, which has strong connections to the UK HR team. Training of call centre agents, says Norwich Unions HR director Russell Martin, is intensive and includes cultural awareness, sensitivity to UK customers, and empathy with the product.
Recruitment is based on what he calls an insurance proposition, rather than simply back office or call centre work, and Indian staff are encouraged to work towards internationally recognised industry accreditation.
The company has already introduced secondment to the UK for ambitious staff.
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