Va. Natural Gas parent call center relocating to U.S.

Has the trend of outsourcing customer-service calls to India reversed course back to the United States?

It has for the parent company of Virginia Natural Gas. AGL Resources, based in Atlanta, decided to move its call center from India back to Georgia.

Since March 2007, VNG's 260,000 customers have directed questions and complaints for the gas company to Wipro Technologies in India. AGL cited cost savings and the difficulty of keeping quality staff at its U.S. center as reasons for the move.

"Wipro employees have provided excellent service to our customers, but we believe our company's best long-term strategy for the future is to provide jobs here," Hank Linginfelter, AGL's executive vice president of utility operations, said in an e-mail.

By June 2010, VNG customer calls will route to Riverdale, Ga., where AGL plans to add 75 representatives. The company kept 76 workers at that site to take "escalation" calls - those forwarded from India when a customer asks to speak to a supervisor.