UK call centres urged to fight for territory

Published on Sunday 21 November 2004 02:36

THE UK’s call centre industry faces a watershed next year as it tries to cope with further moves by blue chip firms to outsource customer care activities, a BT executive has warned.

Speaking ahead of the Edinburgh-staged 10th annual conference of the Call Centre Association, which she chairs, Carol Borghesi, the group’s director of customer care operations, said the sector had to work harder to "claim territory" from overseas competitors.

Last week Lloyds TSB became the latest company to transfer jobs - 1,000 in total including 65 from Glasgow - to India.

BT is currently doubling the number of customer centre workers it employs in India, from 1,250 to 2,200 on two sites in Bangalore and New Delhi.

With four call centres in Scotland, Borghesi handles 31 UK-wide centres employing 14,000 people, plus the further two in the Indian subcontinent.

Borghesi said the UK industry is set to come under even more pressure in the year ahead, as the likes of South Africa and China follow India’s lead by setting up call centre sectors.

"As more and more call centre transaction work migrates south, the industry here faces a watershed in the coming year. It is our job to ensure that customer centres here are driven by a tremendous amount of best practice, to give the best possible value possible to those organisations involved."

Borghesi said the nature of customer management was changing "and it is up to the UK to position itself to claim territory as a customer call centre of excellence".