Hopes of saving call centre dashed

IKEA has turned down an offer by Sheffield-based Ant Marketing to take over its Wath base.

The Swedish furniture giant has decided to merge its Wath operation with another call centre in Peterborough.

Under Ant Marketing’s proposals, it would have taken over the building and staff would have continued to handle customer service enquiries. fronm IKEA’s 17 UK stores and its online shop.

But a spokesman for IKEA We are not looking for support with our lease agreement with the Dearne Valley Contact Centre.

“We have started a consultation process to amalgamate all customer contacts from this centre into the IKEA-owned Peterborough site because today, both sites are under-utilised in terms of seating capacity.

“With the current set-up we do not have full visibility and traceability of all customer contacts through the different contact channels.

“The fact that we operate in two sites comes with some significant drawbacks in terms of cost, consistency, productivity, duplication, impact on the shared resources.”

Ikea said that all potentially-affected employees were being thoroughly consulted as the company reviews its contact centre operations to meet customers’ changing needs.

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