Contact centres ‘as cheap to run in Burnley as in Bombay’

A company is bringing back its call centre operations to the UK - it realised that outsourcing it to India is no longer cheaper than doing the same work at home

New Call Telecom, which competes with BT and Sky to offer home telephone services, broadband and low-cost international calls, is opening a call centre in Burnley, Lancashire after being attracted by low commercial rents and cheap labour.

New Call's chief executive, Nigel Eastwood, said: "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 centre in India and here in the UK."

Eastwood said: "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".

New Call will pay around £4 per square foot for space in Burnley, which Eastwood says is similar to that in Mumbai (Bombay) and New Delhi.
Eastwood said: "Salaries in India aren't that cheap any more. Add to that the costs of us flying out there, hotels and software, and the costs are at an absolute parity.”

Eastwood who confirmed he will be paying staff the basic minimum statutory wage said: “Given the current economic environment, we will get good ‘sticky’ employees who will also receive bonuses linked to their performance."

The use of offshore call centres has proved unpopular with many UK customers over the year, who say they prefer to deal with local staff. An increasing number of organisations use the fact they have UK based call centres in their marketing and advertising to consumers.