CALLS TO one of the State’s main directory inquiry services will be answered from the Philippines for most of the week under plans by the company operating the service to outsource more work to Manila.
Conduit, which runs the 11850 service, says the changes may result in an unspecified number of job losses.
Staff sources say the company plans to move all work at weekends and on Wednesdays to a call centre in Manila.
Night-time calls throughout the week were outsourced to the Philippines last year with the loss of 10 jobs.
Requests to directory inquiries during daytime on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, which are the busiest times for the service, will continue to be handled from the company’s Dublin call centre for now as the Manila operation does not have the facility to take all calls during this period.
A spokesman for Conduit confirmed that the company was reviewing its structure, but said it would do everything it could to minimise job losses.
He declined to comment on the implementation of the proposals until a 30-day consultation period with staff, which began last week, is completed.
Conduit is owned by US call centre operator KGB, which runs a call centre in Manila employing 3,000 people. Typical wages in such operations in southeast Asia are about $2-$3 an hour, far lower than the rates paid to Irish call centre employees.
Conduit once employed more than 1,000 people in its Dublin call centre, but numbers have since fallen to about one-third of this. About 100 people work on directory inquiries.
The company says its customer-care business will not be affected by the review.
:quality(70)/s3.amazonaws.com/arc-authors/irishtimes/e23497a4-11b8-483c-94f7-2871a9e21dab.png)