A sector heeding the call to leave the cities

The teleservices sector continues its unabated expansion and progress; it already employs about 5,000 people and that figure is likely to double by the year 2000. A recent change of emphasis means that more teleservices companies are starting to locate outside Dublin.

Brendan Halpin, new business manager in the international services division of IDA Ireland, says that with many of the approximately 50 call centres that have been set up over the past four years, the preferred location has been Dublin.

This has been because of their need to access a good supply of recruits with multilingual qualifications, people who can talk to customers in other European countries in their own language, whether German, French, Italian or Spanish.

Now, says Mr Halpin, there has been a slight change of emphasis over the last few months, with companies coming in like the Merchants Group whose language requirement is English.

It's one of the leading telemarketing and call centre consultants in Britain and its primary language requirements is English: other European languages will follow. It's the first call centre to set up in Cork, on the IDA Business and Technology Park there.

Another incoming call centre operator, also from Britain, is Flightbookers, a direct sell travel agency. It's chosen Dublin to service the British market in the process creating 115 new jobs for English only speaking non-graduates.

A further English language only teleservices centre is being set up in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, where the US Oxford Health Plans company aims to employ 500 people, using the transatlantic time difference to process healthcare claims in the US market.

In Shannon, GE Capital Services is creating 515 new jobs shortly in a new call centre that will work on the company's credit card and personal loan business in Britain. For all these companies, the demand here is for English language fluency, making the process of regionalisation easier.

Since August, a total of six new call centre job announcements have been made, two from Britain, two from the US and two from Germany. DER (Deutsches Reiseburo Gmbh) has set up a call centre in Galway to service the German market. Lufthansa has recently set up a call centre in Dublin to handle overflow business from its central reservations centre in Kassel, Germany.

All these extra call centres are between them creating about 2,000 extra jobs. They complement many existing call centres, such as Dell, Gateway 2000 and IBM in the computer sector and a number of airlines, such as Ryanair and United Airlines, the latter the world's largest airline.

These new call centres are all creating jobs for people with second and third level qualifications. English only call centres create more openings for people with second level qualifications.

Explains Mr Halpin: "Our success to date in teleservices has been in the multilingual area." Now, the demand is also starting for English only, creating a whole new strand in call centre progression. Recent technical developments in telecoms, like the advent of universal freefone, are also a big boost to the sector.

Overall, Brendan Halpin says that the teleservices sector is still looking good for 1998, for both incoming multilingual and English only centres.

But it's a highly competitive marketplace. The English only centres place IDA Ireland in direct competition with regions of Britain, like Scotland, for call centre business. The North, too, is developing call centres, although it's on a far smaller scale than in this State. Multilingual call centre competition comes primarily from the Netherlands but also to some extent, from Belgium.

The variety of jobs within call centres seems monotonous to some people, but the companies operating them go to great lengths to make the work interesting and create social and other non-work activities that will stimulate workers' interest. A typical example is UPS in Tallaght, Dublin, which already employs around 400 people and plans to take that total to 900, in this, its European call centre and data processing operation.

Brendan Halpin also says that call centres have plenty of promotional opportunities into management, especially if the sector continues its planned expansion over the next three or four years.

More sophisticated jobs have already been created in such areas as technical support, including computers, software and telecoms, while this new industry also has openings for people with logistics skills.

All kinds of steps are being taken to help encourage the flow of suitably qualified people into the industry, like the PLC programme for second level students announced last summer.