Are UK call centres back in fashion?
Recent advertising from NatWest, Esure, Alliance & Leicester and Direct Line would suggest that UK call centres are very much back in fashion. So what's prompted this swing back to the UK?
None of the organisations now sending out comforting messages about UK only call centres tell us how many customers they put at risk by outsourcing their calls abroad.
But customers were and are at risk, not because they're xenophobic or can't understand the accents or hate the scripted calls - that just annoys customers - what actually puts those customers at risk is identify fraud.
We have rules here in blighty, and data protection is there to do exactly that, protect the data surrounding companies and individuals. It all helps to make people feel safe.
While the Brits are buying shredders, in India Data Farming harvests information from passports, mobile phone details, bank account details and has developed as a lucrative business from call centres who are lax about their security.
More than two years ago a Sun journalist was able to buy UK bank account passwords for £4.25 each from an Indian call centre worker and last October Channel 4 discovered that personal details of hundreds of thousands of Britons were available for sale on a vast scale.
Rules under the Data Protection Act are messy in this area. The data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner's Office maintain that if UK businesses choose to offshore their call centre services then those businesses remain legally liable for any security failings.
So are UK call centres back in fashion? Probably only until calls can be offshored again to somewhere cheap, and this time, safe.
