VH Offices moving to India?

Is anyone aware of VH moving their offices to India. Just called VH about an existing booking, the call went through to their offices in India. Is this something new? it took 20 minutes for them to locate my booking and for the questions I had, all they could do was to go through each page in the brochure, which I have already. The supervisor was trying to tell me the hotel I have booked in St. Pete's is actually in Orlando??????

Is this is the way VH are going with their service, then I think they will loose a lot of existing and potential customers.

I don't know anything specific about VH, but there is a general trend for companies exporting their call centre work to India, because prevailing wage rates are so much lower.

I hope not. There is nothing more annoying than getting through Indian call centres. I have never had a good experience with one. VS being so hot on customer service are hopefully aware of this.

quote:Originally posted by jonathan020
I hope not. There is nothing more annoying than getting through Indian call centres.

Especially when they can't pronounce my name. [V]

I liked it when call centres were in Wales. They could always pronounce my name then!

I usually put the phone down on Indian call centres, no disrespect, but as we've already found, they are just there to pick up the phone and parrot what information they have on the screen or in a manual.

They often aren't empowered to do anything to fix your problem ("Oh, you have to write into Customer Services"), they can't put you through to anyone in any authority, and their knowledge of the product they are supposed to be supporting is usually lacking.

It's also a shame that this is making people out of work all over the world, it's not just a British disease.

Mike

I ended up putting the phone down on them today. As they seemed to only be able to answer questions where they could find the answers out of the brochure, they even asked me to call back later!!!![:(!][:(!]

It is a shame VH are going this way, no disrespect but there is NO way I would book a holiday with someone who doesn't even know the basics.

Hope VA doesn't follow suit in moving their call centre(s) to India.

are you sure they haven't opened one in the north east? I mean that sounds like the general competancy of NE call centre workers.

Yep, I think it's a function of poorly trained and un-empowered staff that's the main problem, rather than any particular location (although the economic issues are another question, and problems with spelling/pronunciation/local knowledge don't help). Any time a decision is cost driven (which call centre relocation seemes to be)the danager is that cost savings come to the forefront and issues such as service get forgotten.

What you could have experienced will have been 1 of 2 things:

1. VS UK Call Centre was so busy that you were transfered to an avaiable worldwide office that was open and less busy- these worldwide offices have the same computer systems etc so can provide you with the same service. I was transfered to the USA when ringing VS last week- according to that operator it happens all the time as the UK call centre is understaffed- her exact words 'whats new'. Of course the service isnt as good--I had trouble with explaining my problem to her due to the lang barrier!

2. Or VS are starting to move there call centre to India and u were one of the first to experience this new service hence service not being up to scratch. It is common practice now for major companies to base there call centres in India due to the fact that the Indians work harder than us Brits and they are cheaper. Other companies that do it include:

- British Airways
- HSBC
- Tesco
- M+S

In fact HSBC have been so impressed by the Indian call centre service in Bophal (spelt wrong) that almost all of there IT Centre is being moved to India from there UK HQ. The call centre staff that i have experienced in india have been super and very up to date- tesco and hsbc take it so seriously that they send there workers copies of our soaps to watch so they can keep up on small talk with customers----yes IAM being serious. But knowing SRB he would have made a huge deal out of it- showing how we are helping a NIDC to become a MIDC (new industrially developing country to a More industrially developed country) so i doubt this point.

So you prob were transfered to India due to the overloading of the UK call centre and as i experienced with the US last week- the service wasnt as good due to lang barrier and being not familiar with the hole vrigin product!

I've heard rumours that the indians are starting to demand too much so their jobs are being outsourced to pakistan.

Working for a company who has a large out-sourced office near Delhi (and having been out there to train people last October), I have to say that, though I still have a few reservations about the whole outsourcing issue, I'm no longer hostile to it at all.

I'm proud of what my company has achieved in India and the excellent staff that we have out there.

We treat our India staff on equal terms with our UK staff. Also, we totally disagree with some companies giving their India staff 'British' names etc. We're proud of what we've done and aren't scared to be totally open about having offices in India.

After having globalisation rammed down their throughts for years, India and others are finally using it to their advantage. Well done to them I think. We can't exploit the 3rd world in the name of globalisation and then whine and complain when countries begin to play us at our own game.

Yes, Indian staff are paid a lot less than us, but relatively they are paid extremely well. Also, yes, some India staff (at companies other than mine, I assure you) are somtimes difficult to understand and visa-versa, but most of them are much higher educated than us. Most of the staff at my office have the equivalant of 2 or 3 degrees.

Anyhow! Phew! Sorry, rant over

My company have sent outsourced significant amounts of works out to India, it was a painful process to work out what works and what doesn't.

Back office processing work that is done there is of a consistently high quality. Better productivity, higher quality, lower cost = easy decision.

Telesales and telephone work is different, but no different to the UK, if you have high staff turnover and anly train people to work off a script, then every time the customer wants to go "off script" you will have problems, doesn't matter if that person is in Mumbai, Bangalore, Manchester or Bristol.

Having visited our offices in India a few times I've been amazed by the professionalism, committement and fun... I shouldn't have been, but it made me realise just how deep a preconception (maybe prejudice) I had about India.


My point? It's not an India thing, it's cutting corners, poor training and staff who are not empowered, and none of that fits with the Virgin Brand.

VSlf

quote:Originally posted by TJ

We treat our India staff on equal terms with our UK staff.

I'm sorry but this really upsets me (having had 2 members of my family made redundant). Like every other company using Indian call centres you do not treat Indian staff on equal terms - you pay them considerably less. That is the ONLY reason these companies have moved here. There may well be platitudes about helping developing countries, etc, but these are fundamentally wrong never mind patronising.
The bottom line is that PLCs and Corporations pay less, increase their profits (just look at HSBC and Tesco for example) and we as consumers receive a poorer service.

I have never had a good experience when dealing with an Indian call centre and have moved from both HSBC and Norwich Union as I refuse to deal with people who have no idea what I am speaking about.
I have nothing against Indian people, they do appear to be a very helpful, friendly nation, however at the end of the day they are being exploited. Within a couple of years we will hear about Indian call centres being closed and being re-located to the African sub-continent - again due to cheap labour.

If VH do relocate to India, I for one will never book with them again - thank god for internet booking!!

Rant over

quote:Originally posted by paddyc
If VH do relocate to India, I for one will never book with them again - thank god for internet booking!!

Where do you think the internet code is written

Phil (Buffy)

quote:Originally posted by paddyc
[quote
I'm sorry but this really upsets me (having had 2 members of my family made redundant). Like every other company using Indian call centres you do not treat Indian staff on equal terms - you pay them considerably less. That is the ONLY reason these companies have moved here. There may well be platitudes about helping developing countries, etc, but these are fundamentally wrong never mind patronising.
The bottom line is that PLCs and Corporations pay less, increase their profits (just look at HSBC and Tesco for example) and we as consumers receive a poorer service.

If VH do relocate to India, I for one will never book with them again - thank god for internet booking!!

Rant over

Paddy,
whilst i sypathise with you to a certain extent, I do get fed up with people complaining that their jobs are going overseas to countries where the costs are lower, whilst driving their built outside this country, cheaper to buy cars, buying their Cheaper than Europe Korean electronic gear and flying with cheaper foriegn based carriers.

By buying from other countries than the UK because they are cheaper is the way that manufacturing goes to these countries, as the companies have to now build for price not quality.
Every other country sees this but the UK, where "bargains" are the main focus. in the long term, it will turn us into a backwater with high unemployment. I cannot wait untill all those London based financiers start to lose out to the Indian/Chinese sub continents for their jobs. They will see what their costs before jobs attitude feels like.

I try to buy products built or partially built in this country or produced in this country in terms of food if I can, but it is getting harder and harder to do.

At the end of the day you have to look at this fact:

If your the company director and you can pay someone £5 an hour and they work twice as hard and are twice as nice than someone who you pay £10 an hour what are you going to do it? It is no different to london call centres being moved from london in the 90's to South Wales as the companies who did firstly could pay the staff less and 2ndly would be paid by the EU to do so.

Paddy you say about HSBC and TEsco being 'profit driven plcs' im sorry but any company is profit driven even VS. In fact airlines are notorious for being profit driven- jsut look at VS they dont offer Menues to Y pax anymore as its cheaper not to. LCC are also doing this- Ryanair have the safety cards stuck to the tray as its cheaper.

Whilst you may see them as being explited they do not see it as that. They are being paid more than the average indian wage and are learning a skill. The impact has already been felt- the call centres need IT people to run them so of course the number of IT specialists in india has risen dramatically, this results in people getting paid better which in turns results to the country moving from a LEDC to MEDC it is simple human geography- it has happened all over the world (singapore went through this transition early than most Asian countries for eg). So whilst they may move the call centres to Africa the Indian people will be better off in the long run as they will be as a nation better educated and more qualified than if the call centres hadnt visited.

Whilst it is annoying to losse your job to companies that are out sourcing to India can you not understand why they are doing it? If you were the chairman you would do the exact same thing i think u will find.

90% of the time you do not know who you are talking to you cannot tell if its India or not to be honest and it could very well be an Indian living in the UK.

Boycotting HSBC or NU for having an Indian call centre is silly as for about the last 15 years all Credit Card proccessing centres have been indian and as buffy mentioned an awful lot of internet coding etc is done in Indian (even paddys Internet booking for VH could be processed in India!)! thats nearly as bad as those who boycotted HSBC because they dropped the Midland name and became a 'foreign' bank(even though it had been part of HSBC for 20 years plus!) despite the fact that the HSBC Group is an English company. hehe!

Enough said!

Paddy,

I sympathise with your two family members who have been made redundant, but please don't presume to judge how my company treats it's staff in India, as you are oviously not taking any notice of the relative differences between the UK and India when it comes to pay levels etc.

Of course staff in India are paid a lot less than staff here in the UK. The cost of living in India is tiny compared to here so it would be a ridiculous suggestion that companies pay staff in outsourced offices at the same amount as UK staff.

On a relative level (compared to other Indian and Western companies), our company pays its India staff at the same rate that we pay our UK staff. They get an almost identicle benefits package (though with some differences again taking into account the differences in our societies).

Of course the reason companies are outsourcing is because the costs are lower in India etc, it makes perfectly good business sense.

Also, what makes the jobs being outsourced 'British' jobs??

What Willd has said is true.

Boycotting a company purely because it has outsourced something to India or elsewhere has to be the most ridiculous thing I've heard.

AlanA, Willd and TJ,
I take on board all your comments.

AlanA - you're spot on, it is harder to buy products produced in this country - this I believe is down to 2 things; Firstly, the products brought in from abroad are at least as well produced as those products made here (rarely are they poorer). And secondly, in that never ending quest to reduce costs many companies now purchase products from abroad as they are cheaper (which gets us into a whole new argument)
This throws up my fundamental issue with Indian call centres; I am not getting a level of quality at least as good as that I have experienced with UK call centres.

Willd - As a company director myself, I know that you are indeed right with your assertion that if I can pay someone £5 to do a job why would I want to pay £10? However I come back to my fundamental issue - customer service. The person being paid £10 was doing an excellent job, however the £5 person is not delivering anything like the same value to the customer - this is purely my opinion but with some other anecdotal evidence provided by friends and relations. I also wonder how many people on this forum have had good/bad experiences of an Indian call centre. As a customer of these companies I feel cheated - as I know they have cut their costs but I am paying for it in poor service.

TJ, I've no doubt you believe your company isn't exploiting its Indian workers, but how would you feel if you found out that your colleague in New York who does the exact same job as you was earning double the salary "because of differences in our societies"
What is acceptable though is if that same colleague was earning half your salary because the quality of his work is poor compared to yours.

This sums up the whole situation for me. We have had an issue in this country over the last 30 years where jobs have gone abroad because others can make the products cheaper - BUT TO AT LEAST THE SAME STANDARD - that's economics and I have no issue with that. But in this particular situation we are receiving a poorer product. These companies are cutting costs AND service. I am not prepared to give my business to any company who puts customer service so low.
down their priorities. I know that many people in this country also have this view.

Paddy,

Not 100% certain where you're going with that as all our Indian staff are fully aware of the difference in pay, but as they are intelligent people they understand that, due to the completely different cost of living in each country, the actual figure they are paid is much lower than what we are paid.

However, they also understand that if you compare what we're paid in the UK and what they're paid in India, actually they are at exactly the same level in relative terms.

Using New York as an example is a bit odd as cost of living in the US is very similar to here in the UK.

However, our company, like most other massive trans-nationals has a very simple pay structure based on the relative cost of living in each country that it operates in.

It's pretty normal and virtually everyone involved is aware of this and is supportive as they understand the reasons why.

In addition:

quote:This sums up the whole situation for me. We have had an issue in this country over the last 30 years where jobs have gone abroad because others can make the products cheaper - BUT TO AT LEAST THE SAME STANDARD - that's economics and I have no issue with that. But in this particular situation we are receiving a poorer product. These companies are cutting costs AND service. I am not prepared to give my business to any company who puts customer service so low.
down their priorities. I know that many people in this country also have this view.

I hope you're not just making a generalisation that any company that outsources obviously has customer services very low on it's list of priorities as such a generalisation would be completely obserd.

Just because a company has outsourced doesn't necasarily mean that you're getting a 'poorer product'. I've spoken to many completely incompetant call centre staff here in the UK, so poor service can happen anywhere.

[Decker]

I've just had the unpleasant experience of trying to use online support for an HP Color Laserjet. It took 90 minutes to establish that the person at the other end (whose geographical location I have no clue of but who had an Indian name FWIW) was thoroughly pleasant and knew nothing about what I was asking. At one stage he categorically assured me that it was impossible to do what I wanted to (net use a network printer as LPT1 for legacy apps). I queried this and he disappeared for 5 minutes then came back with an apology. At the end of the conversation he referred me to a googled MSDN Tech tip which was irrelevant but I was so fed up I thanked him and signed off.

If I had been speaking to someone who knew what they were doing I would have been in and out in 5 minutes, but someone who knows what they're doing costs two to three times what a newbie costs. So what that it takes ME 90 minutes to not get an answer the expert could have given me in 5 minutes. At least HP saved some money.

So I don't care WHERE the people are as long as they know what they're doing.

This was actually more of a rant than a contribution - sorry!

Decker,
Are the colour lasers worth getting?

I have an inkjet just for printing photographs, and a black & white laser for all other non colour jobs. Is the laser any better quality yet?

[Decker]

quote:Originally posted by AlanA
Decker,
Are the colour lasers worth getting?

I have an inkjet just for printing photographs, and a black & white laser for all other non colour jobs. Is the laser any better quality yet?

This is the 3200DTN (Retail was about £1500 but has come down now). Prints 16ppm at what I would consider magazine quality. Personally I don't like inkjet output. Will happily send you the "demo printout" if you want so you can see for yourself.

[mitchja]

Decker

YGM

Let me know it it works!!!!

Regards

It seems others are noticing that some of the virgin calls are surfacing in india and its causing frustration...from thedibb.co.uk

http://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35627

For the record I've had banking issues as a result of calls being answered in India and a number of major companies (including Dell) are pulling out of the Indian call centres because of the damage it has caused to their company reputation.

quote:Originally posted by Decker
[br
This is the 3200DTN (Retail was about £1500 but has come down now). Prints 16ppm at what I would consider magazine quality. Personally I don't like inkjet output. Will happily send you the "demo printout" if you want so you can see for yourself.

Thanks for the info Decker, I will take a mooch round my favourite PC shop, will anniy the wife, spending money again

quote:Originally posted by mike-smashing
It's also a shame that this is making people out of work all over the world, it's not just a British disease.

Sorry, Mike, I just cannot agree with you on this one. The economics show that when a UK call centre is relocated to India, then for every pound of costs in that Indian call centre, 1.73 pounds revenue/savings is generated in the UK. Just imagine SRB's eyes lighting up on hearing that sort of statistic.
Economic prosperity comes from increasing efficiency of labour, raw materials and capital. That's why, thank God, we don't still have 500,000 men in the coal-mining industry and shipbuilding and steel are no longer UK mainstays.