Is anyone aware of any specific examples of organisations relocating their contact centre back "home" after experiencing difficulties with Offshoring? What are the common reasons for reversing policy?

Hi
I have just returned from working offshore and can tell you for example that a few companies may be returning onshore, more are leaving. Case and point that there is a 33% increase in companies moving to the Philippines to provide their customers with service. India used to be (some would argue still is) the place for tech service support, while the Philippines is gaining in that arena. Most companies are looking for a cost effective alternative as margins are shrinking and one way to improve that is to move offshore. Offshoring countries offer call centres as a viable career option, whereas the UK/US/Canada/Australia etc are hard pressed to find and keep good quality agents. This translates to a poor customer experience. Add that with shrinking margins, why stay onshore? Many companies keep a presence onshore, more technical or answer higher value customers onshore. Having multiple locations also gives flexibility for a company to route calls more effeciently when volumes dictate higher or lower than expected volumes. Not sure I am giving you the answer you want, however I believe it is very difficult to locate a company that is growing moving back onshore.

Whilst you definately make some valid points, I disagree with a couple:

"Whereas the UK/US/Canada/Australia etc are hard pressed to find and keep good quality agents"

"This translates to a poor customer experience. Add that with shrinking margins, why stay onshore?"

Having just come back from my second trip to India I've learnt that staff acquisition and retention is much more of a problem in India that it is in the UK. This may be behind that fact the nearly all customers in the UK believe an offshore call centre gives them a poorer customer experience. You could write this off as ill-informed consumers having a protectionist attitude, but in reality it's not far from the truth. As a customer service "professional" I've had some very bad customer experiences in my time and in truth a higher than average number come from offshore call centres.

the UK/US/Canada/Australia etc are hard pressed to find and keep good quality agents. This translates to a poor customer experience.

I think this is backwards. Actually not quite backwards...

It is the system of work in these companies that governs both attraction and retention of good staff and the customer experience. If you change the system to give customers a good experience, and you do this by giving control of how the work is done to the staff, then the staff will enjoy doing a good job, they will relish the challenge of improving the work and they won't want to leave. Neither will the customers. The bottom line is boosted and everyone wins.

As of now indian BPO scene is going throgh the pressures of the Rupee appreciating which is proving as a bane for small sized BPOs. Also, Bad customer experience is due to the volatile nature of the industry , retention is a problem specifically for mid-sized BPOs who maintain a thin margin line on the profits.

Still large BPO firms like HCL, Wipro etc are maintaing good business margins and are able to deliver world class services. At this point of time what matters is how big are your operations.

Bad service comes with mom and pop mid-sized outsourcing firms based on unsustainable business model in the long run.

phillipines is coming up as a contender, but on the forefront india still remains the first choice.

"Also, Bad customer experience is due to the volatile nature of the industry , retention is a problem specifically for mid-sized BPOs who maintain a thin margin line on the profits. "

I totally disagree, the volatility is there regardless of where you serve your customers from.
Ill thought out startegy,poor training and lack of ongoing coaching is the biggest factor.
Offshoring is the easy bit, defining and remotely managing a corporate governance model is the difficult bit.