Direct Save Telecom Fear Telecom Rage as Confidence in Call Centres Decline

Home phone and internet provider Direct Save Telecom UK has highlighted several studies that appear to show how consumer confidence in call centres is now at “an all time low“. For example, a recent study by GiffGaff found that Brits had a 6 minute threshold while waiting in a call centre queue before losing their tempers and hanging up.

A similar YouGov survey also reported that 55% of people do not trust call centres in the UK to keep personal data safe, while a whopping 83% of people said that they did not trust overseas call centres to keep personal data safe. Recent media reports, which focused on how some Indian call centres had allegedly sold personal details, probably hasn’t helped. YouGov found that just 4.1% of people claimed to have had a good experience when dealing with a call centre.

According to Direct Save Telecom, all of the big broadband ISPs continue to outsource their technical support overseas: BT’s support is answered in India, TalkTalk uses India, the Philippines and South Africa, Sky Broadband is again in India but does have UK trouble shooters / overflow and Virgin Media has both Indian and UK based support. Apparently the ISP claims that telecoms firms can save 65p on an average call by outsourcing.

Stavros Tsolakis, CEO of Direct Save Telecom, said:

“Yes, it is a lot cheaper to outsource your call centre needs overseas, but cheaper certainly does not mean better. We are living in a fast paced world, where people are constantly on the move. They want quick, effective answers to their questions and certainly do not want to be stuck in a telephone queue, only to be greeted by an operator with a limited English vocabulary who cannot answer your query if you go off script. It does not take a genius to work out why Brits are catching telecom rage.

People have lost trust in overseas call centres, and this makes it even more important that there is a shift back to UK call centres … this is the only way we will get the public’s faith back.”

Naturally Direct Save manages to fit in a shameless plug about how its own customer support team had received just 59 complaints from 21,267 calls, before twisting the knife into TalkTalk lowest rating as part of Ofcom’s latest complaints data (here).