Powergen is pulling the plug on its Indian call centres following complaints from customers. The energy giant announced yesterday that it plans to withdraw all inbound call handling from India and create 1,000 new jobs in the UK instead.

"Offshore call centres may have their place for certain industries," Powergen managing director Nick Horler said. "However, we believe that we can best achieve industry-leading customer service by operating solely in the UK.

"When customers contact us they need to be confident that their query will be fully resolved quickly. Although the cost of overseas outsourcing can be low, we're simply not prepared to achieve savings at the risk or expense of customer satisfaction," he said.

Earlier this week, an Indian outsourcing company confirmed plans to create 1,000 jobs in Northern Ireland over the next two years.

ICICI OneSource, one of India's largest business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, said its decision to expand in Europe comes as a number of companies want to outsource their call centre operations but don't want that work migrated to India. ®