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United Air to Return 165 Reservations Jobs to U.S. From India

By Mary Schlangenstein Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- UAL Corp.’s United Airlines, the third-biggest North American carrier, will return 165 call-center jobs to the U.S. from India to help improve customer service. The jobs will be moved to Chicago and Hawaii, United told employees today. Workers initially will handle reservations and,beginning in April, will add customer-relations duties, the Chicago-based airline said. An evaluation “determined that bringing certain customer-relations positions back to the U.S. will provide the right level of focus this important function requires,” United said in thenotice to workers.

I have argued for a long time, that eventually companies would bring back call center jobs as a way of improving customer service. Outsourcing to lower cost countries is an important step for US companies to remain competitive and effecient. I completely support it. It's not the job loss that bothers me - that job loss is made up in a number of other ways. However, poor customer service does bother me. Too many companies have outsourced service functions to people who don't know how to resolve anything without consulting a FAQ website. US-based customer service will become a selling point for US-businesses soon, and United has taken one of the first shots at it.