Negative customer feedback has led to Delta Air Lines terminating its outsourcing contract with Wipro BPO. This is a serious setback for Wipro BPO in a depressing economic situation especially since Delta had been a client since 2002.

Spokespersons at Atlanta based Delta have confirmed that it has stopped routing customer service calls to India. The move makes Delta the second big carrier to shift customer service work from India after United Airlines did so in February.

“Customer acceptance of call center representatives in other countries was low, and our customers are not shy about letting us have that feedback,” Delta CEO Richard Anderson said in his April 16 message to Delta employees, news agencies reported.

When contacted Wipro’s joint CEO Suresh Vaswani told media, “While I cannot comment on customer specific information, I can confirm that the economic turbulence in the US has had an impact. It’s a matter of new trends in the demand-supply equation,” Vaswani said, referring to the need for US to get back more jobs into their homeland.

The exact size of the Delta-Wipro deal was not immediately known but industry experts estimate it to be between $15-30 million a year. Delta also operates outsourced customer service calls in the Philippines and Jamaica. Over 6,000 jobs were outsourced to these three counties and more than half of those came to India.

Delta had started outsourcing calls to other countries as travel plunged after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Delta had said previously that moving calls to India saved $25 million a year.