| A British phone company is shifting its call center back from Mumbai to Burnley, because it is cheaper. New Call Telecom, which competes with BT and Sky to offer home telephone services, broadband and low-cost international calls, is opening a call center in Lancashire after being attracted by low commercial rents and cheap labour costs, the Daily Mail reports. New Call's chief executive Nigel Eastwood reckons UK employees will stay longer as there are fewer opportunities to switch jobs than in Mumbai. "We did a cost and service analysis of returning home and there was an absolute parity between what we are paying for a third-party call center in India and here in the UK," he said. Eastwood also said that using British staff would also cut costs in the average amount of time taken to deal with customer inquiries. "The average handling time in the UK is three minutes. But if you go out to India, you need to add another minute unless it's a very efficient operation, so that means we can actually reduce the headcount with the saving," he said. "In India in the past decade, as call centers have grown, real-estate prices have gone up massively, while salaries have also crept up," Eastwood added. |
