same here i am with NBNA and have been for over 10 years and i also have never had a problem with them or ever been rooted out to india

Just to add, that Nationwide Building Society have Call Centres here in the UK as well.

Talking about Indian Call Centres, I would really like to have Onetel and Alpha Telecom back here in the UK, as the majority of the staff do not understand the nuances of the English language.  It would be great, if the respective heads of these companies would take note of what we the UK telephone users would like - would the Chairmen of any company want to speak with these Indian Call Centres ?  I doubt it, in fact when I have the need to speak to BT, the call always goes to a UK Call Centre and they always understand how and what you are talking about, and also they understand as to how you feel.

James Bond

I have got to agree with your comment about email replies!

James Bond

I do agree that it's better for banks to have UK call centres, I deal with customers every day and you can tell there is some contempt at the Mumbia etc agents, not because they are not nice people - they are, but there are obvious cultural barriers there.

The last company I worked for, used an Indian call centre for it's IT Helpdesk, and again it was a pain not because they didn't want to be helpful, nor because they were incompetent - quite the opposite they were very skilled (I know this because I went into the local office out of frustation and watched the people in the uk talking to them on instant messenging to solve problems). The issue was the fact you had to ring india to fix a local problem, quite often be put through standard troubleshooting and then once they had decided its a problem wait ages - and somehow thats meant to be more efficent. Not faulting the staff, just the systems.

This seems to also be a problem for other companies, like three for example, you must go to india, but if you have anything meaty (such as you want to change contract, give notice, have a proper payment issue) then you need to speak to glasgow, you know that, they know that, but you have to go through loads of queueing and verificaiton first - i'd rather ring a switchboard and say, yeah can I have retentions in glasgow please.

Some are better than others, and where it is just reading information off then its not so much a problem, but for example when I just called three, they can be really bad and quite often don't understand how to use grammar properly - again not their fault, I wouldn't know where to start with indian.

Natwest have call centres in Plymouth, Southampton (023 80226443) and Bristol I think it is, I bank with them and it is nice to speak to someone that is on a similar wave length.

Barclays Monument is certainly UK - its based in crawley near asda (I worked for them for a day) - I have to stop myself laughing at the crawley accent when I ring up.

Lloyds TSB is Glasgow, Plymouth I think and somewhere else on the south coast, as well as Mumbia.

Nationwide, no idea where, but agreed they are very good and do have uk call centres, and a nice freephone number which is always good.

Not wanting to start a flame war here, but just one thing I'd like to observe. Whilst I accept that there may well be cultural problems in dealing with people from another continent, there is a feeling that, all else being equal, let's say there weren't any cultural barriers, then diverting calls to India would still be a problem because somehow those jobs belong in the UK. Poor and oppressed workers in this country are having their wages driven down by competition overseas and jobs that belong here are being outsourced abroad.

But is that really correct? Think of it from the point of view of poor and oppressed workers in India. We are all citizens of the world. From their end, it looks as if a tremendous opportunity is opening up to create jobs and benefit their economy. These sorts of jobs are highly prized in India where much effort is invested in overcoming just those cultural barriers of which others have rightly spoken. For one thing, they have to learn the language to a basic standard of proficiency.

Now if it turns out, for whatever reason, that all else being equal, the cost of labour in this industry in India is, let's say, 50% less than the cost of labour here, outsourcing is likely to have the effect of reducing the price of these services in this country. This will benefit (thinking of the big picture) the consumers of this country, including the now unemployed call centre workers, who will be available to work in an industry where their labour is more productive, thereby producing further benefit to the consumer in this country.

We cannot always assume that outsourcing overseas is bad for the general welfare either in this country or overseas. In addition, why should we starve those people in other countries of the opportunity to do the same work for less. I know this is controversial, but it is sometimes possible for everybody to win.

I do, however, take the point about cultural barriers. These have already started to restrict how much overseas outsourcing is really practical, which is perhaps why some of these banks have decided against it. In addition, if I recall correctly, political pressures in the US are also starting to have an effect although the Indians reckon there is still enough outsourcing to support the boom in Bangalore.

Just my thoughts on this vexing subject.

longusername wrote on Jan 12^th, 2006 at 8:30pm:


But what jobs will they go to?  Are there any new jobs being created especially for them, or are they just going down the jobcentre to apply for jobs that would have been filled anyway.

If that is the case, then there are no new jobs being created at all, just more competition to go for the jobs already there.  This might have the effect of recruiting higher calibre staff, but it also means that plenty more people are out of work in this country when they shouldn't be!!

And as for saving costs.  It means that big companies can increase their profits, and justify using 0870 to route calls to India, and the little money that is passed back to the public in lower costs (if any) will only be taken back by the government in higher taxes to pay Jobseekers allowance to more people.

Quote:

longusername wrote on Jan 13^th, 2006 at 9:16pm:
Me too.

If they'd call me on my 0871 number too, I'd give 'em an interesting couple of hours of my muzak collection.