118 trades plans to expand call centres in India

Fast growing internet business 118 trades has announced pland to expand its call centre operations in India

[UKPRwire, Fri Jul 28 2006] 118 trades, the fast growing internet directory founded by Daniel Corby in 2005 has announced plans to double the size of its operation in India.

Speaking about the announcement, Daniel Corby said "I see many Insurance companies and Banks getting bad press as they move jobs from the UK to India, but this is not about 118 trades moving jobs. This is about 118 growing jobs in the UK. The larger we can grow the operation in India, the quicker we can grow the UK operation, thus creating and generating more long term jobs here in the UK. The cost of working in India is clearly less than the UK, but not as cheap in terms of labour cost as the UK media would have you believe. What attracts 118 trades to India is the flexible and enthused workforce, where call centres are easy to operate and very scalable"

118 trades plans to base some back office work in India and double the size of the Sales operation back to the UK. 118 trades has a telesales unit in Salt Lake City, Calcutta and this team calls back to the UK making sales calls in tandem with the UK centres.

"We may even launch part of our latest acquisiton in India" added Daniel, "Carauto, which will match buyers to sellers in the used car industry is an ideal fit for basing a large part of the business in India. Having the right part of the operation in India is vital to the business, 118 trades used to have a customer service team in India, but this did not work as well as the UK, so we moved it back. Other operations, especially IT and programming are an ideal fit for a business to be based in India, hence the volume of IT related businesses out there"

118 trades is the UK's leading directory service of tradespeople and businesses with checkable references and has in excess of 40,000 members in the UK already. In addition, the parent company, 118 Group has recently announced plans to open a new state of the art 450 seat call centre in Chelmer Village, Chelmsford, which demonstrates the commitment to the UK by 118.

The senior team of 118 trades has recently overhauled the UK business with the appointment of Business Veteran, Richard Allan to the board, who will work alongside Daniel Corby, CEO and founder and Bradley Chapman, Commercial Director who joined in 2005 from Zenith Conservatories.

www.118trades.com