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Union Fury As Civil Service Outsources Jobs To India


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HOLA441
Why? How hard is it to train a call center employee?

Proper training means calling and getting dealt with quickly and efficiently from a polite and knowledgeable person.

If you've EVER been on the receiving end of trying to get a simple query answered where you are passed from pillar to post, endlessly placed on hold, only to get put through to someone who is either utterly ignorant or doesn't give a shite, you will know the difference.

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HOLA442

Good timing as ever. Some of the offshored jobs are coming back as the employers discover that the skill and work ethic of those superhuman Indians has been subject to pwoperdy style ramping by VIs. (Senior Manages who recieve bonusus for successfully shafting the mug rump)

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HOLA443
Proper training means calling and getting dealt with quickly and efficiently from a polite and knowledgeable person.

If you've EVER been on the receiving end of trying to get a simple query answered where you are passed from pillar to post, endlessly placed on hold, only to get put through to someone who is either utterly ignorant or doesn't give a shite, you will know the difference.

Are you suggesting that there is an alternative experience?

p-o-p

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HOLA444
If you've EVER been on the receiving end of trying to get a simple query answered where you are passed from pillar to post, endlessly placed on hold, only to get put through to someone who is either utterly ignorant or doesn't give a shite, you will know the difference.

Ha - a friend of mine work part time in a call centre when they were at Uni - when bored they would see how many times they could transfer you back and forth, and forget all your details each time, before you hung up.

Edited by apr400
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HOLA445
Ha - a friend of mine work part time in a call centre when they were at Uni - when bored they would see how many times they could transfer you back and forth, and forget all your details each time, before you hung up.

UK Call centres I know are all micro-managed to the finest detail so the scenario your sketching would be well nigh impossible -even the bog breaks are timed .

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HOLA446
UK Call centres I know are all micro-managed to the finest detail so the scenario your sketching would be well nigh impossible -even the bog breaks are timed .

Well it's a second hand story so who knows the truth of it. This was an in-house CC for a bank working the night shift with a head count of about 5 - 10 in total, and everyone including the manager played the game if it is to be believed.

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HOLA447
UK Call centres I know are all micro-managed to the finest detail so the scenario your sketching would be well nigh impossible -even the bog breaks are timed .

Brother in law worked for a call centre (? Vodafone) after Uni and got a written warning for an unscheduled toilet break when he had diarrhoea and was about to poop his pants.

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HOLA448
Guest X-QUORK
Brother in law worked for a call centre (? Vodafone) after Uni and got a written warning for an unscheduled toilet break when he had diarrhoea and was about to poop his pants.

Used to work in another part of the company and we had a tour of one of the call centres one day. I was gobsmacked at how every second had to be accounted for, even toilet breaks. It all seemed pretty dehumanising and I felt grateful to be working in an environment where we were at least treated like adults.

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HOLA449
Used to work in another part of the company and we had a tour of one of the call centres one day. I was gobsmacked at how every second had to be accounted for, even toilet breaks. It all seemed pretty dehumanising and I felt grateful to be working in an environment where we were at least treated like adults.

Agreed. Horrible jobs. The indians are welcome to them.

And I have had as bad a phone service here as in India. Both equally appalling.

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HOLA4410
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HOLA4411
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HOLA4412

They are simply moving costs to other government departments. Those workers will no longer pay tax, instead they will pick up welfare payments. Further people, such as the guy they buy sandwiches off, will be in the same boat. The country had no liabilities with them in the UK, now the country must earn export rupees each month to pay the Indians. Thus this is damaging to UK plc.

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HOLA4413
Suddenly the unions care when it could have an effect on their livelihood. Theyre the reason we're outsourcing, until the unions budge on pensions we have no choice but to privatize and outsource.

I think most unions have totally bent over backwards and shown themselves as totally useless, allowing final salary pensions to be disbanded and 'money purchase' or what ever is put in their place. Luckily my union has protected my pension and hope they will continue to do so. If you work hard and pay money to provide for yourself in retirement you should expect some form of guarantee of a return. You have to realise that it is just more expensive to live in the UK, unless we accept working at 10p/hr we cannot compete with their rates. But we should fight to protect our conditions and benefits, not just continually give and give and give. All this does is boost big business profits.

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HOLA4414
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HOLA4415
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HOLA4416
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HOLA4417

"A spokesman for the Cabinet Office said that it was unlikely that Whitehall departments would send jobs offshore, partly for security reasons"

Of course, we are perfectly capable of losing laptops and CD's full of personal data on British soil...

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HOLA4418

I used to work helldesk, and while your breaks are micromanaged down to the second, they don't listen in on many of your actual calls (they listened to 4 a month of mine).

This pretty much allows you to ******** any customer without fear of reprisals - once your review is up, you know you've got pretty much 3 weeks to say what you like.

A friend of mine who works at a car insurance helldesk (oh dear) says it is fairly similar where he works - he often deals with other employees passing customers to him just to "pass the buck".

I dare say if I was still employed in Helldesk, and my employers told me I was to be made redundant, I would hardly care. The jobs are shit. I'd rather stack shelves - you get more freedom and the same pay (minumum wage)

On topic though, has anyone ever heard of outsourcing to India ever going well? or outsourcing anywhere, for that matter?

I've only ever heard of projects that have been outsourced failing miserably - often having to be redone.

I once read even a data entry project that had been outsourced to India had to be scrapped as it wasn't done correctly. The callcentres are renowned for being no better than an FAQ with a bad accent.

Edited by codeine
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HOLA4419
Proper training means calling and getting dealt with quickly and efficiently from a polite and knowledgeable person.

If you've EVER been on the receiving end of trying to get a simple query answered where you are passed from pillar to post, endlessly placed on hold, only to get put through to someone who is either utterly ignorant or doesn't give a shite, you will know the difference.

Well said. The posters in this topic are exhibiting the same poor management judgement that plagues our country.

It's very easy to script the 10 most common questions in an Indian call centre, but the plethora of other matters that don't have an immediate answer have to be passed to the supervisor. When the supervisor has to then pass these questions to a UK based person, and that queue of unresolved issues gets too large, the calls get bounced back and some random inane answer from the supervisor has to be the 'final word'. Try calling a major printer manufacturer and tell them something outlandish such as "My printer has broken down, but the serial number has been peeled off by my child, it's still under UK warranty, and I have the credit card statement to prove it, but not the receipt". (under English law this is acceptable proof of purchase).

You'll soon get a better idea of how senior managers are coining it by providing a screwed up service that on the surface of it is worth a big bonus due to the cost savings for the company, but underneath is gradually eroding customer loyalty.

Most IT projects work like this. IT says "but we gave you what you asked for" because the project 'delivered' to specification. That specification never thought to measure disenfranchised, hacked-off customers, because someone would have to take ownership.

When I think of cheap'n'nasty call centres, I think of soylent green. It's like cheap food for the masses. If you've got money, you'll go elsewhere, or throw the product in the bin and start again.

My idea is that call centres providing UK based services cannot be licensed unless they have a customer ratings systems similar to Amazon. Every call gets a unique ID that can be listened to by anyone wanting proof that the service quality was poor. Has anyone here every had to try to read out a serial number to an Indian, and then have them read it back? Twenty five minutes if you're lucky. Why should they get away with this crap?

And don't get me started on those low-quality IP lines!

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HOLA4420

Getting back to the story, somebody probably said "save £xyz from next year's budget" so rightly or wrongly, they decided to cut support staff costs. The alternative would have been to scale back on projects overseas.

I don't doubt that the British Council wastes money like any other public sector organisation. Nor do I doubt that the quality of service provided by many offshore call centres is poor.

It's easy to snipe at the quality of spoken English by call-centre Indians and at nebulous public-sector organisations like the BC, but the BC is the organisation most committed to the teaching of English on the subcontinent - in terms of both quality and quantity. They are training literally millions of schoolteachers to teach English. This will be, on balance, hugely useful for the Anglophone world over the next century, even if it does make it easier for Johnny Foreigner to "steal our jobs" in the short term.

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HOLA4421
Union fury as civil service outsources jobs to India

Aww snookums!

What do you expect? We friggin import plastic crap from China, Malaysia, India, and elsewhere for pence and slave labour, yet bark when India takes our jobs?

Whats a call centre employee make here? £15,000-25,000k p.a.? India pays about £2,500 p.a. for exactly the same service, or actually better as this is considered good wages.

Wake up. Get used to it.

More on it's way.

I laughed until I stopped

You and I can look forward to paying for their redundancy payouts and benefits.

We will also have to fork out for all their Indian replacements too.

Of course when sterling eventually crashes as is inevitable given the UK debt position. the wage arbitrage may vanish overnight and the UK taxpayer could wind out forking even more than he is now.

BTW the fact the HMG has decided to get into offshoring is an almost certain sign that the craze is probably in its final phase as the clods who run the Civil Service normally turn up at any party just as the booze has run out and all the drunks are throwing up.

Edited by stenosis
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HOLA4422
Those workers will no longer pay tax, instead they will pick up welfare payments.

So what? At 90k a pop it appears possible to pay them benefits, employ an Indian, and have enough left over to cover the tax they would have paid. Anyway, they could not have been doing anything actually worth 90k to the employer if they stay on the dole following a redundancy?

Not that I wish redundancy on anyone, but I don't see why the public sector should avoid cost-efficient ways of doing things just because that would not suit the employees? The argument "they need to be paid money so they can spend it" is just silly.

Further people, such as the guy they buy sandwiches off, will be in the same boat.

If that bothers anyone, he can be given some of the leftover money.

The country had no liabilities with them in the UK, now the country must earn export rupees each month to pay the Indians. Thus this is damaging to UK plc.

??? How is it damaging if there are Indians who *must* import something from the UK every month (directly or otherwise) if they want to consume their salary?

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HOLA4423
You have the choice to pay a little more and support people.

A little more!? At a time when we're borrowing £300 billion and printing (at least) £150billion per annum. Given the likely tax receipts to april 2010 not even a 100% increase in taxation wouldnt come close to bridging the gap.

edited for disgraceful grammar.

Edited by Sadman
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HOLA4424
Well said. The posters in this topic are exhibiting the same poor management judgement that plagues our country.

It's very easy to script the 10 most common questions in an Indian call centre, but the plethora of other matters that don't have an immediate answer have to be passed to the supervisor. When the supervisor has to then pass these questions to a UK based person, and that queue of unresolved issues gets too large, the calls get bounced back and some random inane answer from the supervisor has to be the 'final word'. Try calling a major printer manufacturer and tell them something outlandish such as "My printer has broken down, but the serial number has been peeled off by my child, it's still under UK warranty, and I have the credit card statement to prove it, but not the receipt". (under English law this is acceptable proof of purchase).

You'll soon get a better idea of how senior managers are coining it by providing a screwed up service that on the surface of it is worth a big bonus due to the cost savings for the company, but underneath is gradually eroding customer loyalty.

Most IT projects work like this. IT says "but we gave you what you asked for" because the project 'delivered' to specification. That specification never thought to measure disenfranchised, hacked-off customers, because someone would have to take ownership.

When I think of cheap'n'nasty call centres, I think of soylent green. It's like cheap food for the masses. If you've got money, you'll go elsewhere, or throw the product in the bin and start again.

My idea is that call centres providing UK based services cannot be licensed unless they have a customer ratings systems similar to Amazon. Every call gets a unique ID that can be listened to by anyone wanting proof that the service quality was poor. Has anyone here every had to try to read out a serial number to an Indian, and then have them read it back? Twenty five minutes if you're lucky. Why should they get away with this crap?

And don't get me started on those low-quality IP lines!

All the focus is on acquisition rather than retention, so existing customers are viewed as a 'nuisance' when they have problems, unlike potential new customers, who can add extra revenue.

Think about it - decent savings rates (only available to NEW customers), 0% balance transfers (only available to NEW customers), mobile phone contracts (only available to NEW customers)... broadband, etc. etc. Basically all the services we use on a day-to-day basis and the onus is on US to use our precious spare time to switch around constantly for the best deals. Is this a good business model? How much could a company save by keeping its existing customers happy rather than spending insane amounts of money on acquisition of new customers?

A case in point, about 15 years ago I took a Saturday job in an inbound call centre, advertised as just answering queries from customers (mostly deliveries of stuff they had paid for). My 'training' consisted of ways to fob customers off. The classic was a letter we could request from a fictitious person in the company to be sent out. Whenever a customer called again and quoted the name on the letter, we had to tell them that the person had left the company/on holiday/off sick and there were no records of that letter being sent on the system. One guy called me with terrible delivery problems - part deliveries, defective items, etc. and I looked into it for him and called him back. He was insanely happy when I actually did call back, almost to the point of weeping, then I was quietly taken aside by one of the managers and told that in no circumstances should I do that. It was 3pm on my first day. I walked.

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HOLA4425
... How much could a company save by keeping its existing customers happy rather than spending insane amounts of money on acquisition of new customers?

...

What are you on?

You will put all us "marketing experts" out of a job :D

PS the mobile phone thing is a good example - most companies made a loss on the first year's contract (in the UK where the free phone was part of the "hello" bribe - illegal in much of the EU). Yet 30% of customers left after year one to get a new phone.

Most of these offers have now died a death due to EU regulations requiring phone number portability.

There are plenty of studies on customer retention vs acquisition costs but british management is so bad they are too busy trying to screw money out the shareholders to read them ;)

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