In the last few days leading UK energy provider Powergen – owned by E.ON – has revealed it is to close its Indian customer services call center and return the jobs to the UK following ongoing customer complaints.
The German-owned power firm has confirmed that all UK customer inquires will now be dealt with in the UK by staff in Bedford, Bolton, Leicester, Nottingham or Rayleigh. Apart from customer complaints over the quality of service provided by the Asian call centers, Powergen said its motivation for the move was that it would be easier to train and manage staff domestically.
The move, which comes just five years after Powergen first outsourced some of its call center responsibilities to India, represents a significant u-turn in attitude and could represent a new trend of repatriating call center jobs back to the UK, Finextra reports.
Offshore call center operations have proved a contentious subject in the UK over recent years, especially in the financial services sector. A number of banks and mutual lenders now market themselves on the fact that they do not offshore their contact centers.
