HMRC to close Sunday help line

From the end of November, HMRC has revealed that it will close its contact centres on Sundays, reports Accounting Web.

The move will allow the tax department to redeploy staff to the peak periods throughout the rest of the week, “driving down waiting times and providing a more effective service for all”.

According to HMRC's impact assessment of the move, advisers are often left waiting for calls during very quiet periods such as Sunday afternoons and redeploying them at much busier times will allow the department to answer an extra 3% of call attempts.

Nordia, a Canadian procall centre business, has acquired the NCO Group's Nanaimo contact centre, located at Country Club Centre, writes Canada.com.

The call centre, which opened in 2001 to provide outgoing calls for businesses and currently employs 140 people, had been scheduled to close.

"We are thrilled to be operating our first call centre in western Canada here in Nanaimo and to welcome these seasoned employees into the Nordia family," said John DiNardo, president of Nordia, at a ceremony marking the occasion.

The Philippines is set to overtake India as the world's back office for voice-based customer support and sales this year, as firms such as Cisco, HSBC, T-Mobile and BT Plc shift work to the nation to avoid India's high staff turnover, and build an alternate support hub, says the Economic Times.

Better affinity with the American culture, lack of competing industries for skilled workforce, higher tax incentives and an overall strategy to de-risk from a pure India-based call centre model are among top reasons for this shift.

Of India's total BPO exports, nearly 45% comes from voice-based work, which is expected to be around $5.58 billion this year. However, the Philippines BPO industry will post almost $5.70 billion of pure voice-based revenues in 2010, higher than its bigger outsourcing rival, research firm Everest and the Business Process Association of Philippines says.