Broadband ISP and mobile network operator Vodafone are to shift some of their Customer Care teams from the UK to South Africa and Egypt. The outsourcing move, which is planned to take place in November 2023, may help to lower the operator’s costs but will also put hundreds of jobs at risk.

In a statement released to the relevant teams and leaked to ISPreview this week, the operator highlighted how delivering “simplicity across our operations” was a key part of their ambition to become number one for customer experience. As part of that, Vodafone also said they needed to ensure they’re working as “efficiently as possible“.

The proposed changes involve transferring the work that sits within Consumer Care from Vodafone UK to Webhelp in South Africa. At the same time, the work that sits within Mobile Tech and HBB Tech will also be moving from the UK to VOIS (Vodafone Intelligent Solutions) in Egypt. The changes are both due to take effect from 1st November 2023.

The move will naturally place those affected in the UK at risk of redundancy and subject to the usual consultations. The exact number of those jobs likely to be impacted remains unclear, but our sources suggested it could be in the hundreds. But Vodafone informed us that they will still retain a strong presence in the UK in terms of customer support, and the move only impacts a small number of home-based roles.

The operator’s specialist care team remains in the UK, and they are still actively recruiting in the UK for Consumer frontline teams (they’ve already added around 300 roles to these in the last 18 months). Crucially, they still appear to be committed to growing the scale and scope of their teams in Stoke – more than doubling their team size there in the last 18 months.

Anybody made redundant due to today’s news will be able to re-apply for other roles.

A Vodafone Spokesperson told ISPreview:

“We continually review our structures and ways of working to best serve our customers and as part of this ongoing process we are moving a small number of home-based roles to external partners. The roles affected equate to three percent of our UK based Consumer Frontline teams, and the people affected will be offered redundancy or the opportunity to apply for other roles.”

The development is not said to be linked to Vodafone’s announcement in May 2023, which revealed that the operator planned to cut 11,000 jobs across its global business (here). But at the time it was unclear how many positions would be impacted in the UK.

So if in previous years we saw a trend of telecoms companies moving their support teams back into the UK, then rising inflation and related costs may well be triggering the start of a move back in the opposite direction. Outsourcing support departments tends to be unpopular with consumers, not least because some people find it harder to understand different accents, and it can also result in generally lower satisfaction scores.