Lehman Brothers ditches call centre outsourcer for in house

Investment bank Lehman Brothers is bucking the recent trend for offshoring to India with a resolution to move its call centres back in-house.

Lehman Brothers had outsourced its internal computer helpdesk to BPO and IT services firm Wipro last year in a contract thought to be worth up to $100m, but made the decision to return the call centres to the US six weeks ago because it wasn't happy with the quality of the work delivered by the outsourcer.

The bank also uses another local Indian call centre company, Tata. The call centres handled tasks like recording employees' tech problems and employed around 450 staff between them.

Lehman Brothers hasn't put an end to all its outsourcing activities, however - it's still using outside labour for software development and some other tech support functions.

While corporate big names like Barclays continue to opt for offshoring, there is some indication that outsourcing abroad isn't winning favour with everyone.

Dell recently decided to drop its technical support call centres in Bangalore in India due to customer complaints and the US state of Indiana last month cancelled a contract with Tata, saying it preferred to offer more opportunities to local outfits.