My, my, my. HP is shipping their "Frontline" volume call center over to India. Check the inter-company memo below...

Source: InternalMemos

CALL CENTRE CONSOLIDATION
HP Volume Call Centre (commercial)

Key facts:

* To remain competitive, we need to review our business goals and operations, and make changes where necessary to meet our goals.
* The front line support for the Volume Call Centre will be centralised to India. This is a region-wide activity that is occurring in all HP subsidiaries across the Asia Pacific, including Australia.
* The centralisation of front line support across the Asia Pacific region, including Australia for our commercial products, is to provide consistency of front line customer contact, to align the pre-merger HP and Compaq organisations and to reduce costs.
* The changes will take place on a rolling schedule, with the consolidation being finalised by September.


A snapshot of the consolidation plans for Frontline support is below:

Function When
Compaq & HP Australia & New Zealand Commercial PCs July & August
HP Australia Personal Monochrome LaserJet Printers and Business InkJet Printers August
HP New Zealand Personal Monochrome LaserJet Printers, colour LaserJet Printers, MOPIER printers and Business InkJet Printers September
HP Australia colour LaserJet Printers and MOPIER printers September

Q&A

1. How long before the entire call centre consolidation is completed?

There will be a rolling schedule of changes due to outsourcing to India. The consolidation will be completed in September.

2. What if I want to leave now, and not wait until September?

The change will occur on a rolling schedule, with the first impact occurring in August. You will need to speak to your manager to discuss your individual circumstances.

3. Will there be opportunities to work at HP?

HP can't determine at this stage if there will be jobs available as a result of this consolidation. Please visit HP's jobs site to review any permanent roles available: http://www.jobs.hp.com." rel="nofollow">LINK

4. Is this just Phase 1 of consolidation? Should we expect more job losses to come from our areas?

At this stage, HP does not anticipate any further consolidation from the HPCS call centres. However, we cannot predict business strength, and from time-to-time there may need to be adjustments to allow for business patterns.

5. Why is part of the call centre being outsourced to India?

The centralisation of front line support for the Volume call centre across the Asia Pacific region to India, including that of Australia, is to provide consistency of front line customer contact across the Asia Pacific and to reduce costs.

6. We've all heard these rumours for months "why didn't you tell us the decision earlier?"

While we have been working on the consolidation plan for some months, HP wasn't in a position to communicate to our personnel and our outsourced call centres until we had finalised the decisions and performed due diligence.

To communicate information earlier, when the decisions weren't confirmed and may have changed, would have caused more anxiety - not less - to our personnel and outsourced call centres.

7. There seems to be a trend of companies moving call centre roles to India (eg Telstra). What's to stop the whole operation moving there?

Like any other business, HP is constantly looking for ways to remain agile and globally competitive in the current environment.

To remain competitive, we need to review our cost structures, and at this time outsourcing the front line support to a centralised location is the current business model to achieve our goals.

While HP regrets the impact of this change, for the overall good of the business the decision was sound. However, at this time there are no further plans to move the remainder of the Volume call centre to India.

8. What about the other call centres in HP - will they be outsourced to India too?

We can't comment on whether other HP business units have plans for their call centres. Ultimately, it's up to each individual business unit to decide what's best for their business.

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A Proud Indian Canadian