LONDON: E.On U.K., the British unit of German energy utility E.On AG, better known as Powergen, is moving its call center services from India in order to improve customer services.
The company said Thursday it has decided to cancel a contract given to an Indian call center firm, which will result in an addition of 980 jobs to the 5,000 employees in its five U.K. call centers by the end of the year.
The company's managing director Nick Horler said offshore call centers may be good for certain industries and he believed industry-leading customer service can be achieved by operating solely in the U.K.
A company spokesperson said the decision to consolidate customer service operations in the U.K. would help create more consistency in attending to client queries. It would also streamline training and systems operations.
She said the company would change its focus to satisfactorily answering customer queries unlike achieving specific targets of number of customers attended to, which is the practice followed by the Indian company.
The company had started using call centres in India five years ago for financial benefits. It is now saying it is not prepared to achieve savings at the risk or expense of customer satisfaction.
The new jobs will be created at the company's call centres in Bedford, Bolton, Leicester, Nottingham and Rayleigh in Essex.
