UnofficialDLHelper

Delta and Sykes have announced that they have mutually agreed to terminate their call center partner relationship, effective immediately.

Delta entered into three call center partner relationship agreements with offshore call centers in 2003 including Sykes Enterprises, Inc., in Bangalore, India, Wipro-Spectramind, in Mumbai, India, and Pune and Daksh, in New Delhi. Delta will continue it's partnerships with Wipro-Spectramind and Daksh, who will take over calls previously handled by Sykes.

These vendor partnerships further strengthen Delta’s Reservation Sales operation by providing much needed flexibility and capacity at a competitive cost and helps Delta respond to customer needs more quickly and effectively.

No Reservations Sales employees have been involuntarily furloughed as a result of Delta's offshore partnerships, nor did Delta deny any internal employee transfers to Reservations Sales. In 2003, Delta's call center partners in India handled less than four percent of Delta's calls. Delta does not plan further expansion of offshore call center services, at this time, except for possible minor adjustments in order to improve the quality of customer service.

I am not a sanctioned representative of Delta on these boards, just an interested participant. I'm only here trying to shed light on DL issues brought up on this board and to provide my opinion and/or to try to answer Qs. I do work for Delta, but I don't represent DL's final word when answering a question (in any capacity). Please e-mail Customer Care with your questions to get a corporately-supported reply. www.delta.com/email

Pointfreak!

Thanks for the update UDH.

DeltaPurser

This just in...

ATLANTA (AP) -- Financially troubled Delta Air Lines Inc. said Wednesday it was shuttering one of its three call centers in India, but declined to discuss whether the move was related to a survey asking customers if they would be willing to pay a fee to speak to a U.S-based agent rather than one in India.

Here's the link to the article... http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/040728/delta_4.html

indufan

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60704

mikey1003

That's 1/3 of the job.....2 more to go

aceflyer2

DL needs to start making wise decisions so they won't have to keep reneging on poor past ones.

RSSrsvp

How does Bruce always get quoted?

DeltaFlyingProf

I heard about the survey, but not that it had a choice of paying a fee to speak to a US based agent. Hey Delta, why should I pay a fee for YOU to sell ME a product? Sounds like what is happening in France (but not in all EU countries). So would I pay 35c/min to be put on hold? NO WAY! It's ridiculous!

OrlandoFlyer

As said previously, one down and two to go.

I cannot imagine paying to speak to a DL reservations agent in the USA. If DL go that route they may as well close down as I seriously doubt that other airlines will follow, although there is always that sheep syndrome amongst airlines...... Or is monkey see, monkey do.

USCGamecock

Tell it like it is Bruce!!!!!!!! ^ ^ ^

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/busi...outsource.html

BackOfTheBus

The topic title should be along the lines of 'Delta ENHANCES India Call Center Operations'

From the little info provided I understood that Delta has NO INTENTIONS to pull out of India. The functions of the call center to close will be absorbed by no other than the other 2 India call centers. Who knows, it might be the center with the better customer service agents that is being shafted because it cost DL 10 cents more per hour!

I would not trust this press release any more than a Gordon Bethune press conference!

JS

I hate press releases with spin.

"Delta to Close India Call Center" is a true statement (just barely) because they are closing one call center, the singular being implied by the lack of a plural "centers".

It's OK to drop non-essential words in a news title, but I think they really should have added the word "one" or "an". Glancing at it, it appears they are closing the (i.e., all of it) India Call Center, when in fact they are closing only one of three.

Pointfreak!

From UDH in the other thread (Mods: Maybe a merge?):

No Reservations Sales employees have been involuntarily furloughed as a result of Delta's offshore partnerships, nor did Delta deny any internal employee transfers to Reservations Sales. In 2003, Delta's call center partners in India handled less than four percent of Delta's calls.

I found the last sentence interesting. Judging from the complaints around here I expected that number to be higher.

Dick Ginkowski

Cousin Brucie scores again!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...i-business-hed

Canarsie

I have considered combining this thread with the Call Center in India? thread, but I faced a couple of significant problems:

• Both threads, while related to Delta Air Lines using call centers in India, really dealt with two different topics.
• The other thread was older, so even if both threads were combined, the news about Delta Air Lines no longer using one of the call centers in India would have been buried in the thread, just as the valuable post by UnofficialDLHelper was buried in that thread. In my opinion, UnofficialDLHelper actually should have started a new thread (as DeltaPurser had), as the news about Delta Air Lines no longer using one of the call centers in India seems to be considered by some FlyerTalk members in the Delta forum significant enough news to warrant its own thread.

Simply combining both threads was definitely not the answer, as I felt it would only cause more problems and confusion.

I carefully looked at the mileposts in both threads and found that the last two mileposts in the other thread actually belonged to this thread, so here is what I did...

I separated the last two mileposts from the other thread and combined them into this thread. Because this thread was already known as DL closing India Call Center, the topic of the milepost by UnofficialDLHelper was renamed to the original topic of this thread so as not to confuse anyone searching for this thread.

All of the information should now be conveniently pertinent to each thread, and the chronological order in each thread remains intact, as the last two mileposts from the other thread are now the first two mileposts in this thread.

Regards,

Canarsie
Co-Moderator, Delta forum