There is something uniquely bonding in the experience of complaining about the cashier’s glum face at our local supermarket or the perverse grin on the bus drivers face as he watches you race to catch the bus, and promptly closes the door in your sweaty breathless face. Customer service - it is something we as customers feel very strongly about and quite rightly too. Is it too much to ask that you get a chirpy smile with your weekly shop or that bus drivers actually want you to catch the bus? It came as no surprise then, that when a report was released this week suggesting UK customers were not 100 per cent satisfied with the services offered by their credit card provider, it caught the sourcingfocus.com news team’s attention.

The report revealed that a huge two million UK customers were disatisfied with the customer service offered by companies such as American Express which had fallen in customer satisfaction charts. Halifax, Lloyds TSB and Natwest came bottom of the league tables, with only 64 per cent, 63 per cent and 62 per cent of shoppers respectively being satisfied. Why can’t they get it right? It seems all we ever hear about is retail banks and their downfalls (Not to mention their botched outsourcing deals).

The major UK banks may not have used outsourcing wisely in the past but their relatives across the pond seem to be utilising its advantages. US Universities are showing increased interest in outsourcing. A survey revealed that IT decision makers are facing challenges that include the need to effectively balance the provision of resources for their constituencies against their focus on strategic initiatives.

Apparently half of the survey respondents said they already outsource some IT services with the most common being those considered non-strategic, such as student email, laptop distribution, printer support and project management. Nearly all respondents said they thought outsourcing would be good for their institutions.

Sounds like good news for ITO, however, news released by Wipro would suggest otherwise. The technology giant disclosed planes to cut 85 jobs in Finland. It seems that the industry is still experiencing the aftershocks of the recent economic downturn. At the same time TPI claimed in its fourth-quarter and full-year 2009 data that the global outsourcing market has had its best performance in the last six quarters. Hopefully we will not be hearing about any further job losses, then.

To summarise this week, UK banks are still crap and outsourcing both on the up and the down at the same time. I think that says it all.