It’s official: the UK hates offshoring

It’s official: consumers – that’s men, women and teenagers from across all walks of life, within all age groups, and in every part of the UK – hate offshoring. And the more information-based the offshore service is (yes, I’m talking about call centres), the more they dislike it.

sourcingfocus.com has commissioned exclusive research from ICM into consumers’ attitude to offshoring, which will be published on this site tomorrow. The results suggest not so much a gauntlet being thrown down to the outsourcing industry as a full-bloodied slap in the face.

Just three percent of all respondents are happy with the concept of offshore call centres, while only five percent are happy with offshore loan application handling – the same percentage as for payroll processing.

The picture was only slightly better for manufacturing: 15% of all consumers are happy with the offshore manufacturing of electronic goods; and 13% with the offshoring of clothes-making.

Looking through the other end of the telescope, as it were, 59% of all consumers describe themselves as “very unhappy” with call centre work being done overseas; and 47% and 49% are unhappy with offshore loan application handling and payroll processing, respectively.

However, only 11% of consumers say they are unhappy with electronic goods being made overseas, while just 12% are unhappy with the offshore manufacture of clothes.

The hidden message there is the real challenge to companies that offshore key services, especially call centres and business processes: despite the negative publicity about sweatshops in the clothing industry, far fewer people are unhappy about having such goods made overseas than they are with offshore call centres.

That said, 60 percent of consumers say they would pay more for goods and services generally to keep them in the UK, while just over one quarter (27%) would happily let services be handled outside the UK if it was cheaper.

The results hold true across every sector, age group and region of society, with women tending to hold the most trenchant and negative views on communication-based services being located outside the UK.

It’s grim reading up North too: in Scotland, only one percent of respondents are happy with overseas call centres, while 73% describe themselves as “very unhappy” with them.

Sixty-four percent of low-skilled workers dislike overseas call centres, versus an unhappy 48% of people in the ‘AB’ group. Don’t relax too much, however: only four percent of AB respondents describe themselves as “very happy” with offshore centres.

Businesses spend millions of pounds every year researching customer attitudes in an effort to prove that the offshore call centre experience somehow adds value to the brand; our research, which is broken down into the most granular detail over some 26 pages, suggests this is rubbish.

Your customer is on the phone, UK Business plc; and he or she – whether young, middle aged or old, educated or low-skilled, wealthy or struggling to reach above the poverty line – is not happy.

Posted by on 04/29 at 04:05 PM

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