Thomas Cook to outsource its Falkirk contact centre
Thomas Cook is to outsource its Falkirk customer contact centre to a company headquartered in France.
The operator said that as part of the agreement, its 300-person operation will remain in its current premises in Scotland but staff will be employed by Webhelp from October.
All staff were told yesterday that they would switch to Webhelp via a Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment).
A spokesman said there would be a cost saving as a result of outsourcing the work to Webhelp, which also provides services to other travel companies includings easyjet and Eurostar.
Ingo Burmester, Thomas Cook’s chief of UK source market said: "By using the expertise of a provider like Webhelp for our contact centre in Falkirk, we can keep improving our service while focusing our business where we can create the most value for our customers.
Webhelp UK chief executive David Turner said: "We’re delighted to have been selected to help deliver world class customer experience for Thomas Cook’s holiday customers and proud that our record of excellence in customer service, technology and IT capability and long term commitment to Falkirk made us the right partner for the brand."
Thomas Cook said outsourcing its customer contact centre was ‘consistent with its strategy to form partnerships which allow the business to streamline its operations while maintaining or improving its core offer to its customers’.
Webhelp describes itself as a global business process outsourcer, specialising in customer experience, sales and marketing services across voice, social and digital channels.
It operates from more than 110 sites in 33 countries with a team of about 40,000. It said: "Our focus is on engineering performance improvements and delivering a real and lasting transformation in our clients’ operating models to generate financial advantage."
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