Offshoring - the competitive (dis)advantage

Jun 23 2005 by Brian Amble Print This Article

More on our story today about confidential bank account details from an Indian call centre being sold to an undercover reporter.

As we suggested, financial institutions who haven't 'offshored' jobs are going to have a field day with this. Already one UK bank, NatWest, has run a TV advertising campaign that makes a public a play of the fact that it doesn't believe in 'offshoring'.

And now we've just received a press release from the Alliance & Leicester bank (kudus to an on-the-ball PR department) 'reminding' the media that they "remain committed to UK-based call centres as we believe these best serve our customers' needs and are what our customers want."

Research conducted last year showed almost nine in ten Britons would prefer not to have their banking or other financial services needs serviced by an offshore call centre, and that half were concerned about the security of their personal information, the Alliance & Leicester add. Almost half thought they would experience lower levels of service.

Needless to say, they have "no intention of outsourcing any call centre activity overseas."

Now, what was that about offshoring delivering a competitive advantage?

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