Telstra has revealed that it will be offshoring a substantial portion of its bill support contact centre operation to the Philippines.
The telco reassured workers that no jobs were at stake as part of the move, but that staff in Manila contact centres will provide support as Australian workers undertake training to deal with a new billing system.
"No Telstra jobs are affected by this particular decision, these are additional resources for credit management," said a Telstra spokesperson.
According to the spokesperson, Australian credit management staff will also commence additional training in managing peak call volumes, ahead of an expected increase in customer enquiries when the new billing system is introduced.
"Telstra incurs significant costs from these services," said David Cannon, senior analyst in telecommunications at research firm IDC. "The business case to offshore non-critical operations at a time like this for Telstra makes a lot of sense ... especially considering contact centre staff overseas are definitely improving."
"Certainly there's a trend for telcos this year to move offshore for support services," he said.
Cannon believes that Telstra's decision to move these operations to the Philippines are as much a reflection of the rising costs of offshoring to India as they are the quality of contact centre staff in Manila.
"Call centre costs have actually gone up in India ... it's certainly not as cheap there as it used to be," he said, adding that AAPT's partial offshore move to the Philippines is further proof of rising costs.
No jobs at risk what a load of rubbish. Telstra does not care about customers or its workers, its all about the fat cats at the top and share holders. I am sure the Telstra spin doctors will come up with some rubbish to deny this.