British companies bringing back its outsourced work to home is gaining momentum as companies like Aviva, BT and Santander are bringing their work back to UK. This is because of several factors, which include a high jobless rate in UK and a need to better connect with their customers, coupled with rising costs in India.

Last week, UK-based telecom firm New Call Telecom decided to move its call centre back to Lancashire from Mumbai. This week saw shares of Mphasis fall over 6% as banking group, Santander, moved its retail banking-related call centre services from the Indian vendor back to the UK.

"In the current economic climate, it is very good PR to be investing in the UK economy at a time of real economic hardship and high unemployment. To be seen to be 'putting something back in', rather than to be 'taking something out' is likely to be a strong selling point for a brand," said John O'Brien, research director at TechMarketView, in a report published in the Economic Times.

UK insurer Aviva moved back some jobs from its Indian BPO partner WNS earlier this year. People familiar with the matter said that the company faced quality issues.

In recent months, UK BPO giants Serco and Capita have also been actively acquiring UK-based and predominantly onshore call centre capability. Indian outsourcers, HCL Technologies and Firstsource Solutions , already use onshore capability for voice-based customer-facing roles in UK.
Santander and New Call Telecom combined together are expected to create 600 new jobs in the UK, which may seem small in comparison to the people employed by the Indian IT-BPO sector, but it is a fairly significant number in the UK.

"The whole issue around accents just became really big in the UK, for some reason it was never seen as a problem in the US. It just got highlighted a lot in the UK and then some companies started using it as marketing tool too," said Pramod Bhasin, ex-CEO and non- executive vicechairman of the country's largest BPO firm Genpact .

"It will continue to happen from time to time, due to customer services issues, but given the amount of work that happens in India, it will not be a problem," he said.
The use of foreign call centers has also proved unpopular with many customers, who say they prefer to deal with British staff.