Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

What's everyone's take on call centres abroad? With the news that Barclaycard are making 600 people redundant in Manchester and sending some of the work to Yorkshire (I believe) and the rest to India, is this a good thing?
I recently spoke to a call centre in India, and to be honest, I couldn't understand a word the woman was saying. Also, is it right that these countries have all sorts of personal information about us at their fingertips?
I personally think it's wrong to send this work overseas and whenever possible I always ask a company I am doing business with where their call centres are and if they are abroad, I will not use them. I realise that's impossible if they send the work abroad once I am already a customer but I have no control over that.
I bank with the Alliance and Liecester and when you call them they always answer with 'hello, this is so and so in Liverpool, how can I help you?'.
I suppose you could say I am biased as in a couple of months I will lose my job as my company thinks it better to pay someone in China to make the things I make now. Ahh, the great God called 'outsourcing'.
Just imagine if every single company in the UK followed this short sighted example - there would be no one left here with a job and so no one here able to buy all the things that have been outsourced. Or have I got this completely wrong?

shoz wrote:What's everyone's take on call centres abroad? With the news that Barclaycard are making 600 people redundant in Manchester and sending some of the work to Yorkshire (I believe) and the rest to India, is this a good thing?
I recently spoke to a call centre in India, and to be honest, I couldn't understand a word the woman was saying. Also, is it right that these countries have all sorts of personal information about us at their fingertips?
I personally think it's wrong to send this work overseas and whenever possible I always ask a company I am doing business with where their call centres are and if they are abroad, I will not use them. I realise that's impossible if they send the work abroad once I am already a customer but I have no control over that.
I bank with the Alliance and Liecester and when you call them they always answer with 'hello, this is so and so in Liverpool, how can I help you?'.
I suppose you could say I am biased as in a couple of months I will lose my job as my company thinks it better to pay someone in China to make the things I make now. Ahh, the great God called 'outsourcing'.
Just imagine if every single company in the UK followed this short sighted example - there would be no one left here with a job and so no one here able to buy all the things that have been outsourced. Or have I got this completely wrong?

I have a lot of sympathy with your position on this.

Expanding further it concerns me that as a country we have allowed so many of our utility companies (especially water) to be sold to foreign hands and that we are largely dependent on a distinctly politically unstable region in the Middle East for petrol and diesel.

We have also rundown our dairy, fruit and other food producing capabilities in order to be "good Europeans" and comply with the disastrous Common Agricultural Policy!

We should surely be developing our own alternative fuels so we can tell other countries to poke it when they try to hold us over a barrel (pun unintended!). I also think we should regain control of our utility companies and what food production we can.

If that means leaving the EU so be it!

I have noticed that a number of companies are closing their call centres down in India and moving them back here due to customer complaints...

Unfortunately they are given a script and that will not (or cannot) deviate from it!

Not sure if it was here or in another group I subscribe to a few weeks ago.

Car crash due to a rabbit surprising one of the drivers involved. The claims settler in India (on behalf of a certain company in the east of England) is demanding to know the address and insurance details of the rabbit.

I kid you not!

I spoke recently to someone who wanted to buy a Dell computer, and spoke to their call centre in India. At the time we spoke she still wasn't sure if she had a) had her order recorded at all, and b) would get the machine she actually thought she had ordered.