More UK call centre jobs to move to India

London: The call centres in the UK will face a watershed next year as it tries to cope with further moves by firms to outsource customer services to countries like India, a British Telecom executive has warned.
Speaking ahead of the 10th annual conference of the Call Centre Association in Edinburgh, its chairperson and BT's director of customer care operations Carol Borghesi said the sector had to work harder to "claim territory" from overseas competitors.



Recently Lloyds TSB announced it would transfer 1,000 jobs 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.

Borghesi, who handles 31 centres across UK employing 14,000 people, plus the two in the Indian subcontinent, said the UK industry is set to come under even more pressure in the year ahead, as countries like South Africa and China follow India's lead by setting up call centres.

"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," she said She added that it was up to the UK to position itself to claim territory as a customer call centre of excellence.