UK2 brings support back to Blighty, culls execs
Call centres coming home, bosses going home
Posted in Management, 29th May 2009 13:19 GMT
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
Hosting provider UK2 has shut its overseas call centres in favour of a UK support team and this week culled executives as part of a major reorganisation.
About 40 jobs went in India and about 35 in Ukraine when the firm made the switch.
Managing director Ditlev Bredahl said: "We actually think that the overall changes we've gone through will result in a higher service level."
The move runs counter to the industry trend. Rival web hosting firm Fasthosts recently replaced almost all its UK support staff with a call centre in Romania.
On Tuesday UK2 also canned its Operations Manager, Human Resources Manager, and Marketing Director. Bredahl said the purge would have no impact on customers. The firm has grown from about 30 staff to 200 in the past three years. ®
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
COMMENTS
Recycled PR
""We actually think that the overall changes we've gone through will result in a higher service level.""
Didn't they say this exact thing when they outsourced to Aturbanstan?
Shakje: Are UK2 any good at hosting? Answer: YES!
Are UK2 any good at hosting? By Shakje:
I can confirm they are. I use them for work and have worked incredibly well for about 8 years or more. For that reason over 5 years ago I used them to host websites form myself and a club I am with. Again always reliable and rarely down.
Email support I used recently and was painless and the issues was sorted quickly. In the past I tried to call but got a rather blunt twat at the other end that I would have loved to just belt.
UK2 are expensive compared to others, but I don;t mind paying for the reliability, and ease of use of the whole package.
Ditlev is the problem
Not his management or support team. He's the one who decided to start charging for all the "free forever" services that came bundled with their hosting and destroyed the company's reputation for cheap but honest hosting.
That said, customer service has been better than before recently, although it was non-existent before.
Save the Cents and the Pounds will take care of themselves
This couldn't have anything to do with the fact that despite the recent mini rally the pound is still more than 30% down on its value against the dollar some 18 months ago - could it?
No impact on customers ?
No impact on customers ?
So it must be pure coincidence that this move was announced at exactly the same time as UK2 trashed the email inbox that they manage for me. Which means I'm back to dealing with their support team. Which means I'll hear back from them in a week's time asking questions that I already answered when I reported the problem - if past performance is anything to go by.
My experience of these guys is that their service is pricier than the competition, and their service levels are worse. Why do I stay with them ? Pure inertia - I have better things to do with my waking hours than migrate my business to another host. Which means that at some point in time they'll inevitably push me an inch too far.
Managers are humans too, so I don't see the point in gloating over them losing their jobs. UK2 can present it as a positive if they like, but binning important roles within the organisation such as marketing and HR speaks of a business that's in trouble: no marketing today means fewer new customers tomorrow; no HR today means employee issues later in the week. Wielding the knife in these areas suggests to me that they are in the doo-doo big time. Maybe that's the final push that I needed...
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
The new Office Garage series:
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
