According to research published by the call centre consultancy , UK agents answer 25% more calls than Indian agents and resolve 17% more of the calls the first time. It found that more than one third of callers to Indian call centres have to ring back another time.
However, in an industry that focuses primarily upon keeping costs down it is easy to see why companies continue to shift their call centres away from the UK. The research found that Indian agents earn less than 12% of their UK counterparts, who are paid an average of 拢13,000 a year.
Steve Morrell, author of the ContactBabel report, said: "These figures show what we all knew anyway: businesses moving their call centres to India are doing it to save their salary bill not to improve their quality of service, regardless of what they say.
"It's hard to ignore salary savings like these, but if customers get a worse service and end up going to a competitor with a call centre in the UK then these cost savings will soon disappear."
The trend for companies to move call centres to India has prompted an angry response from unions as well as reports in the media that workers are made to watch English shows such as 'Coronation Street' to give them more local-sounding accents. They are also reported to take on anglicised names and have computer access to local weather reports so that they can comment on the weather to callers.
More information on the report can be found .
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