Young call-centre customers mistrust offshoring

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NEWS

Young people don't trust overseas call centres and are critical of companies that outsource work to offshore locations.

In a recent poll of call-centre customers in which three-quarters of respondents were aged between 20 and 29, 40 per cent believed their security is compromised by using offshore call centres.

Just over half said company location affects their buying decisions, and one in three said offshoring is bad for a business' image.

The survey was conducted earlier this year by Blue Prism, maker of an automated customer system, and Sheffield Hallam University.

Call-centre security was brought to the fore in April 2005 when three Indian call-centre workers were arrested for stealing $350,000 from the accounts of Citibank customers and then again in June of that year when a Sun reporter was able to buy sensitive information such as bank-account and driving-licence details from an Indian call-centre employee.

More recentl, Indian IT trade association Nasscom launched an initiative to set security and privacy standards for offshore operations.

It has pointed out in the past that there is fraud and cases of lax security at call-centre operations in all parts of the world.

Talkback

It's not just the young customers who are mistrusting of those who outsource service provision overseas.

No amount of training or script reading can prepare a call centre operative in the subcontinent for dealing with the varieties of local accents in England. Mine isn't anything like as pronounced as some of my colleagues yet I have had cause to have to repeat myself - often s-l-o-w-l-y - many times when dealing with my bank's offshored call centre. It's becoming more than a minor inconvenience now.

If you can't understand the person on the other end of the phone you can't provide a decent service, whatever your level of education.

My bank account will be switching in the coming months.

via Facebook 24 July, 2006 08:51
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