Insure Your Motor Backs British Call Centres & Jobs
Many large and well-known motor insurers have moved their call centres and much of their workforce overseas. Insure Your Motor believes this trend is a mistake – we continue to offer a truly British service to customers, creating British jobs for people with local knowledge and experience.
With Norwich Union axing some 200 jobs in Norwich alone in their move to shift their call centre operation to India, many employees will be left feeling angry and bitter about the state of UK businesses and their apparent lack of ethics. Tens of thousands of British call centre jobs have already been lost to India in the past 5 years. Analysts predict that this figure will increase by 20% a year, and in 5 years time over 2 million Indians will be working in outsourced call centres. Thankfully, there still remain some truly British companies who realise the benefits of retaining British employees, in a British company, with a British client base.
David Harlow is MD of Leading online motor insurance broker InsureYourMotor.com. He comments:
“I truly believe that these big corporations have got it totally wrong. The business model in theory is a good one, after all who wouldn’t want to cut 40% off their costs overnight?! The trouble is, however, Norwich Union, made massive profits last year. They have become greedy, but at the expense of the consumer.
“These savings are not being passed onto the consumer but are simply lining the pockets of the shareholders. British consumers will vote with their feet on this issue. Dissatisfaction with offshore call centres is universal. The new telephone directory (118) is a perfect example. Although the new breed of Indian employee may be highly intelligent, they simply cannot compete with those with local knowledge. This is even more true for the complex legal issues involved in car insurance. Our strategy over the next three years is to continue offering franchise opportunities for those with experience in car insurance.
“Norwich Union may not want these British workers but we would love to offer some of them jobs. We want people from Norwich to set up our Norwich division in 2004. Mr Blair might think that we can’t do anything to stop companies transferring to the sub continent, but I can’t see any reason why businesses would want to give up the wealth of talent we have on our own doorstop.”
