High quality Indian call centres dealing with sophisticated technology work on behalf of well-known multinationals are market leaders in their field and are expected to remain so for the foreseeable future.

But there is some evidence of British consumer dissatisfaction with 60 per cent of call centre work at the lower end of the pyramid, known as the transactional level, carried out in India.

These are the conclusions of the United Kingdom-based call centre researcher Mike Allen.

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"I have never said that Indian call centres are generically bad. But the result of our consumer research shows that the British consumer on the lower-end stuff, the transactional work, was unimpressed," Allen told rediff.com.

"We're talking about the bottom end of the pyramid, which accounts for 60 per cent of the work done globally, is transactional work, like 'can I have the train time, can I have a bank balance inquiry.' It's very simple stuff," he said.

Eighteen months ago Allen's company, Mitial, a call and contact research centre specialist, commissioned a survey that asked consumers to list their preference and experience of offshore call centres.

The survey was based on a sample of 1,048 people interviewed at five locations: Slough, Dublin, Glasgow, Cardiff, Birmingham.

There is a growing unease amongst British customers dealing with Indian call centre workers over poor pronunciation, the survey said.

The survey said that the quality of Indian call centre workers is declining rapidly as poorly qualified and trained staff is being deployed to meet demand from American and European companies.

The survey said that staff at Indian call centres, despite 'cultural training,' do not always appreciate the nuances of life in British society, and have also experienced difficulty in understanding some staff.

"When asked what was their experience of offshore call centres, a massive number said they had experience of India and a massive number said they weren't happy with that," said Allen.

"Our belief is that at the highest level India, along with the Philippines, is probably unassailable in terms of the quality cost combination. This is the high-end technical support involving high-end Microsoft coding type work where the location of the agent is completely irrelevant to the levels of sophistication they have," he said.

"I'll give you a good example of that. If you fall out of a helicopter in the South China Sea, or in the North Sea off an oil rig, when you press your radio on your life vest, that radio goes to a highly skilled agent who tries to get you back in that helicopter. It's very high level stuff," he said.

"What our research shows is that problems arise at the lower levels where the consumer might be calling a call centre to move a direct debit from one place to another, that's where there is a problem."

Problems are now also starting to arise at the next level up where the founding managers of the call centre phenomenon are moving on to new and better jobs, many of them in attractive foreign locations.

"They have moved out of India and are looking at the career ladder to move up internationally," said Allen.

"What that's creating in India  is  a problem with middle management. You never had a lot of experienced middle management and now the leading agents who spent 18 months in the call centres learning the ropes are moving out."

Because of the profits involved the call centre industry in India is now also attracting small-scale entrepreneurs who are willing to work for very low rates for some British and other European customers.

"As they don't need international approval, they get going and pick up some fairly crappy international business rather than the AOL or choice IBM sites," said Allen.

"The reality of it is there are plenty of people in Europe or the UK who are only too happy to come in with an ultra-low cost supplier, give them a project to do that is not viable to do in the (United) States or Europe, and screw them to the floor," he said.

"If you look at the trickle-down effect, from the client down to the Indian management through to the agents who are recruited, you have a situation that assumes delivery before the project has even started. It's actually poorly planned," he said.

"So when the work goes ahead and comes into Europe, the guys haven't been trained properly and all the complaints made about a poor UK call centre can be made about a poor quality Indian call centre. The difference is that in such cases the Indian agent typically has a poor quality of English -- poorer than that of an English agent," he said.

"So as well as not being that good in delivery, there can be a situation where the UK consumer can't understand them that well either. Pronunciation remains a key factor of service," said Allen.

Illustrating his point with an anecdote, Allen recounted a recent story of a friend who was asked by an Indian call centre operator to describe his 'fart.' "My friend Richard had just bought a new Fiat and the comical conversation that arose about his 'fart' was because the Indian operator could not pronounce Fiat," claimed Allen.

All is not lost, however, Allen asserted, because UK companies are still discovering the advantages of Indian call centres.

Contrary to a recent newspaper reports, there is no evidence of UK companies pulling out of India because of a few negative experiences, he said.

"In the UK, the wildebeest sniffed India, trotted across the river and now the wildebeest are in full flight," he said.

"That will go on for probably a year at least. The only country that will become potentially a serious offshore rival to India is probably the Philippines," he said.

The only short-term danger he foresees is that some of the lower-end call centre operations will be replaced by technology in about two years, resulting in some job losses.

"The big chance for the Indian call centre industry is to develop a very strong outsourcing community of Indian-owned companies, not American or British-owned outsourcers. They need to develop as many high quality outsourcers as possible so that when the wind shifts direction they won't be shut down," he added.