Wipro BPO has lost its outsourcing contract with Delta Air Lines following negative customer feedback. Delta has been Wipro’s client since 2002. Spokespersons at Delta, the Atlanta based carrier, have gone on record saying 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 FC, “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. (more…)

There is an alert for a future problem that is facing the outsourcing industry, where a think tank warned of probable lower rates of growth and the consequent reduction in its labor force, which is directly opposite what the industry has been saying for months—that the sector is not unduly affected by the global financial crisis.

The warning came from the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research Inc. (Eiler), which made a study of the issue.

Eiler deputy executive director Anna Leah Escresa-Colina said a reduced work force without a corresponding reduction in the work could lead to a rise in occupational health damage.

The Business Processing Association of the Philippines had recently announced that companies may cut growth rates in 2010. (more…)

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is learnt to be restructuring pay-scales for its BPO employees. The first step being withholding quarterly variable pay. Sources inform that the company had recently brought its BPO arm under the quarterly variable pay structure, thereby withholding the component for the January-March quarter resulting in reduction of March salaries of the employees.

Seeing their company’s logo on the Rajasthan Royals team during the IPL may bring cheers to TCSers. But its BPO arm’s employees aren’t that happy. Sources say that TCS has recently brought its BPO arm under its ‘quarterly variable’ pay structure, which was introduced in April 2008. Under the pay structure, part of the variable pay is paid at the end of every quarter.

TCS BPO’s employees used to get their entire variable pay monthly until March 2009. For the January to March period, this withheld quarterly variable pay has been deducted from the final March salary paid out. The payment of the withheld amount in April is to be decided when TCS’ board meets for its fiscal fourth quarter and annual results on Monday. Source