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An article relating to this blog post on Finextra:

Lloyds TSB offshores 450 IT jobs

UK bank Lloyds TSB is transferring up to 250 permanent IT jobs and 200 contractor positions to offshore centres in India.


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Lloyds TSB offshores IT, not call centre

An interesting article on Finextra about Lloyds TSB offshoring 450 IT jobs.

What it makes it interesting is that Lloyds TSB has opted not just to keep its contact centres onshore, but create new contact centre jobs onshore.

I've covered this in past posts like "Onshore still growing - Lloyds TSB" but it makes clear that if customer service is important, then onshore has a lot of attractions. Interestingly, I was in a presentation from a senior Lloyds manager on Wednesday and he was explaining that the contact centre (especially the self-service part) is very well regarded by their customers.

The bigger issue here is whether you view contact centre as a cost or part of your brand. I've talked about this before (e.g. "Is cost a contact centre issue or a symptom?"), but it's an issue that still isn't well understood. My view is that if part of your organisation is going to interact with customers regularly and represent you to them, then managing that part as a cost centre is not sensible. If consumers form their impression of you from direct experience, then vast amounts of marketing spend will struggle to overcome that.
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Comments: (2)

A Finextra member
A Finextra member 18 May, 2008, 13:35Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Hi Alex,

I think it's a smart move not to offshore the call centre operations. Lloyds correctly chose to keep the customer contact where it is most valuable, with their customers. Back end outsourcing is less apparent to customers but call centres are critical. I don't think vanilla flavoured foreign call centres are a good move, especially if you want to keep customers close to your brand. I've certainly switched banks because of it.

Alex Noble
Alex Noble - McAfee - London 27 May, 2008, 13:54Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Hi Dean,

I agree completely. It seems crazy to cut a (relatively) small cost around customer service and then incur huge costs around brand damage and lost business.

Best wishes,

Alex

 

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