Barclaycard make 140 people redundant - outsour...

...despite their parent company Barclays announcing record profits of £11.6billion.

close to home as these unfortunate people will be from Northampton - my home town.

its another case of big business not giving a damn about the local resources & economy which has supported them for decades, jsut to save a few quid.

It is a case of Barclaycard not really caring at all, I suspect, Neil.

Having been involved a lot in this kind of outsourced customer support world, I doubt very much whether they are even saving much money.

More importantly, they are demonstrating a disregard for their clients, who will now have to listen to scripted responses to everything, and never, ever be able to get issues sorted.

However, I doubt that is so different to how it is today anyhow!

I am always intrigued at who on earth makes such a decision. Customer services are the most crucial point of contact in any company. The deal was done some time ago, the product bought and probably the honeymoon is over so what better way to help the customer but the give this important call to someone on the other side of the world
It never works, so why even think it will work. No one will take ownership of your problem, they will script read and if they cannot solve the issue then, opps I lost the call.
If you do not want to deal with companies who offshore customer services then please just vote with your feet. They may not get the message but your blood pressure will be lower

There seems to be a lot of pressure to outsource all this stuff to India.

I think they are working very aggressively with these global companies at a governmental level to do these quid pro quo deals that gets work into their capitals. Understandable really evem if it doesn't suit us.

We have offered similar deals for international companies to site their factories here in the past and I think its the same kind of thing.

Sad innit!

Every day I get to talk to people all around the world and not understand an effing word they are on about just because their government did a deal with Barclays, Virgin, BT, HSBC, etc.,

but, then I don't have any luck with scouse or geordie either.

Les, I offer a Geordie translation service, should that help!

I think the whole call centre thing is proof positive that the company concerned have customer service very low on the list of priorities. If on their at all. If you are Barclaycard, cleaning up on the highest rates of interest ever, why would you worry?

Oh, you might be ethical. Stop me, I am being so silly.

Paul

I will conference call you the next time I have to talk to Direct Line :)))))

and what is ethical, is that like some kind of bio alcohol?

As far as I know, yes!

Okay, I suggest we get as much as we can without pushing the price up and then bottle it and sell it at 4N meets as a kind of 'eye poppin' 'eco friendly' drink with a stripline of one bottle of this and you won't be able to 'get off your arse'...........

Foolish false economy move on their part

What Les' new drinks plan?

It is a real shame when this is done at the cost of British jobs, however not all companies outsource to places like India so they can make savings by sacking UK staff. I used to work for an insurance company that used to outsource calls, but they only did so for different reasons

(1) They either physically didnt have enough room for anymore staff or they couldnt attarct enough people to fill the seats (When you are employing close on 2000 people and there are several similar sized call centres in the area, the job market gets exhausted of suitable candidates and recruitment becomes a big headache)

(2) To take calls after 8pm so UK staff didnt have to work through the night.

They never did it for the sake of saving money as there was no real savings to be had. They also never did it at the cost of any jobs in the UK (The company hasnt laid anyone off since it started).

If the company suddenly saw a spike in demand or launched a new product and needed 200 new staff as a result, there were companies in India that had the facilities in to get that up and running in days rather than the months it would take over here.

On the quality front, the company I worked for constantly monitored the staff of the call quality and kept it to a very high standard. If they couldnt speak clear english they were simply taken off the phones.

Here is a strange fact - Call centre staff in India are paid (on average) 50% more than doctors!

"Here is a strange fact - Call centre staff in India are paid (on average) 50% more than doctors! "

No wonder the buggers are always so cheerful

Just to be controversial, some of the best call centre experiences I have had have been with Indian Call Centres (Microsoft)

Some of the worst have been UK (Congestion Charge)

Depends on the training doesn't it?

thats a really interesting spin G

HSBC were the first to go to India, and the first to realise that it was a false economy.

Having set up HSBCnet dealing daily with India, even the thought of ringing the call centre raises my blood pressure. Why? Because it does not matter that you have solved 8 out of 10 of the issues and you have a very specific question you are forced to go through the wole script from the very beginning, and you know you will be on the phone for half an hour at a time!!! A costly waste of time for both parties.