Origin Energy announce changes to local call centre outsourcing arrangements
After an article on ABC, Origin Energy’s external affairs manager Ryan Auger has confirmed that they will not be renewing their contract with call centre operator Aegis which is due to expire on February 28, 2016.
Aegis currently have approximately 120 staff working on the campaign in their Werribee centre, south west of Melbourne.
The new Origin Energy call centre outsourcing contract has been awarded to Accenture, which has offices in Chennai, Manila and Melbourne with bulk of the roles being placed into the Manila call centre.
Mr Auger said that, despite the latest move, most of its call centre jobs will remain onshore.
“The vast majority of our contact centre operations will stay onshore, at a ratio of about five-to-one,” he said. “We’ve got about 500 contracts in our employees here and about 100 offshore and we are committed to maintaining that strong domestic presence in our customer service operation.”
Aegis, wholly owned by the Essar Group, is an Indian multinational conglomerate with investments in the sectors of steel, energy, infrastructure and services.
Aegis’s Melbourne call centre operations has had a strong presence in the Australian Contact Centre industry initially known as UCMS before being acquired by Aegis in 2009.
The company’s head of operations and support Avik Choudhuri said Aegis will examine all options to ensure staff remain employed. “Our first approach will be try and talk to different business houses to see if there was opportunity out there to keep the centre open in an ongoing manner,” he told the ABC.
“Alternatively, we are also communicating with our employees to generate an expression of interest, via which we could possibly redeploy them to other job openings within the wider Aegis organisation.”
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