Communications company Flow will now be insourcing much of its field operation services, ending its outsourcing relationship with Swedish communications company Ericsson re-employing much of the staff.

“Approximately 150 jobs are being brought back,” Ronnie Thompson, senior director in charge of customer experience for Flow, told the

Jamaica Observer.

The decision is a reversal of the previous strategy to outsource some of its fixed-line maintenance, repairs and installation services to Ericsson.

“Now the market has changed,” Thompson said, and the company wants to “control all our touch points”. As a result, “we pretty much control that aspect of our business”.

“Certainly we are now in a much better place to improve our service offering to our customers,” he said. “We can now deliver in a much more forthright way.”

Although the change in strategy only took place in November, the indications so far have been good. “We are seeing improvement,” Thompson said. “Complaints are being reduced… overall our performance is trending in the right direction.”

The staff have specialised skills and functions in areas such as: outside plant construction and maintenance; network maintenance; customer premises installation and repairs; and workforce management, which includes Tier 2 technical support for internet service and dispatch function for field technicians.

Flow says it took the decision to insource so as to “directly interface with our customers at key touch points, and one such is our field services”, according to a company release. Field Services were insourced last month.

“Ericsson has been a good partner; however, we at Flow needed to have control of the services to meet our customer commitment objectives,” the release also stated.