Three UK Looking to Close Outbound Call Centers

Hutchison 3G UK is reported to be ready to terminate contracts with nearly thirty of its outbound call centers due to concerns over the quality of the customer base they were selling to. The UK trade magazine, Mobile Today reported that around half the call centres culled by 3 are due to issues around high levels of fraud, returns, 'never pays' (customers not paying their bills) and complaints to 3. The other half were doing very small volumes.

Amongst the call centers to be terminated inlcuded the company's largest 3rd party reseller, Landmark in South Wales, which is understood to have been selling 5,000 contracts per month at its height several years ago, but dipped to below 2,000 more recently.

The company is now working to improve the quality of the customers signed up through its remaining resellers.

According to estimates from the Mobile World analysts, Hutchison 3G UK ended the first quarter of this year with 4.43 million customers, representing a market share of just under 6%.

On the web: Mobile Today - Mobile World

Posted to the site on 31st August 2009