By
Layne Holley
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Date Published: June 09, 2011 - Last Updated August 22, 2018
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Comments
Delta Airlines Inc. says it will stop sending U.S. customer calls to its call center operated by off-shore outsourcer Mindpearl in South Africa by July 1, 2011, according to an Associated Press report.
Following on, US Airways LLC is planning to close its Manila call center in 2011, The Street reported in January.
US Airways opened its Philippines center in 2004 as a cost recovery measure, as did many airlines after the economic devastation after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S., which involved commercial airliners. Delta did the same in 2003, negotiating off-shore outsourcing in India and the Philippines, expecting to save some $26 million by sending customers to off-shore outsourced call centers, as reported InformationWeek.
In 2006, US Airways brought 600 reservations jobs back to the U.S. from Manila, Mexico City and San Salvador. In a May 2006 interview with The Street, the company’s CEO Doug Parker said that outsourcing would never be as good as the company’s own employees and that corporate cost cutting made it feasible to bring the work back to the U.S.
The Business Case for Contact Center Repatriation
“The reason many executives were originally sold on off-shoring was based on a myopic view of the wrong metrics – such as cost per call and cost per minute,” says Mary Murcott, contact center consultant and CEO of Novo1, a U.S. outsourcing firm. “We know now those are the wrong metrics of success – especially when taking into account first contact resolution (FCR),” said Murcott in a recent article for ICMI.com.
New Call Center Jobs in the U.S.?
Delta says it will not reduce the number of call center workers around the world and, according to the AP report, won’t reduce that number in the shift from outsourcing off shore. Will those jobs be coming back to the U.S.?
Tell us your off-shoring – and outsourcing – story.