Virgin Media will employ 500 new call-centre staff in the UK to deal with the impact of coronavirus in countries including India and the Philippines where offshore workers handle customer service calls.
The move is the first sign that the telecoms industry is moving to address the potential issue of offshore workers no longer being able to handle calls at a time when the number of customers calling to complain of issues or to upgrade to faster services has boomed.
Ministers, the regulator Ofcom and telecoms executives discussed the issue of disruption to offshore workers in countries such as India on a call last week to discuss network resilience.
Companies including Vodafone, Virgin Media, BT’s Openreach and Three use offshore call centres in India and other locations and have had to prepare for the disruption caused by coronavirus restrictions in those countries.
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Virgin Media is looking to rapidly employ the 500 new staff using video calls for interviews to deal with a sharp rise in call waiting times driven by the number of people working from home and looking to upgrade to better broadband packages.
The roles will be at existing call centres in Teesside, Sheffield, Manchester and Birmingham and will require workers to go into call centres.
Abby Thomas, Virgin Media’s customer director, said: “The company has introduced a number of measures to ensure its people remain as safe as possible while continuing to help answer customer calls and queries. This includes providing remote working capabilities, where possible, and ensuring strict social distancing and hygiene measures are in place for sites that need to remain open.”
The virus has already caused problems within Britain’s call centres because of the threat of infection in the working environment. Some locations have already closed.
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Companies including Virgin Media have split floors to guard against teams becoming infected with the coronavirus and spaced out desks to ensure social distancing measures are in place in locations that have remained open.
Openreach, BT’s networking arm, has staff in Indian centres which has caused disruption to its internal processes.
Vodafone uses call centres in both India and Egypt and has been preparing for the potential lockdown in the subcontinent by moving desktops to worker’s homes where broadband connections can support customer service work.
