The most attractive place in North America for a company to build a call centre is a region in Canada, says a new study. The Boyd Company, which advises financial institutions and major corporations on where to locate new facilities, compared 60 locations in the US and Canada. It found that New Brunswick, a province in Canada, was the cheapest place to have a typical call centre with total annual operating costs of $9.4 million (€9.54 million); San Francisco was the most expensive at $14.3 million.

Annual operating costs in the Boyd study were scaled to a 250-worker financial services call centre occupying 35,000 square feet and having an annual call volume of 24 million minutes of billable toll-free service.

"New Brunswick emerged as a very attractive location for call centres," said Mr John H. Boyd, president of Princeton, New Jersey-based The Boyd Company. Companies that have recently set up call centres in the area include Cendant, IBM, Xerox and Marriott International. Royal Bank of Canada already has a call centre there.

The study analysed all the major operating costs critical to a bank when choosing a location, including labour, telecommunications, taxes, office lease costs, utilities and other factors. San Francisco's most costly ranking was due to high labour costs and inflated office rents. Taxes on telecommunications services were also high for San Francisco. In contrast, Canada's favourable exchange rate, common language and available labour all positioned New Brunswick as an investment opportunity. New Brunswick, in fact, is a bilingual province, with many of its inhabitants speaking both French and English.

There are 70,000 call centres in the US and Canada employing more than 2.5 million people. Mr Boyd forecasts that by 2003, there will be 105,000 North American call centres with over four million employees.

Although the publishing industry has had call centres for the past 20 years, mainly for subscriber services and billing, other industries have only recently discovered them. The biggest players are computer companies, banks, pharmaceutical firms and retailers. The rise in catalogue and Internet shopping has meant call centres are booming. "In my 25 years in business, I have not seen an industry grow as rapidly as call centres," said Mr Boyd.

Banking by phone and trading online have made many of The Boyd Company's Fortune 500 clients major players in the call-centre industry, he said. The Boyd Company counsels companies where to locate and tries to position its clients ahead of the curve. Its clients include Chase Manhattan, PNC Bank and Progressive Casualty Insurance Company of Cleveland, Ohio.

"The most important criteria for clients are labour supply and skills, cost, and the telecommunications infrastructure," said Mr Boyd. "Canada has a sophisticated telecommunications network with NBTel in New Brunswick, in particular, aggressively servicing call centres."

Since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, Mr Boyd said, he sees "a rush of new, highly sophisticated call centres" to cross-sell banking, insurance and brokerage products.

As companies in North America select borderless sites, they are also looking to Europe where telecommunication costs have dropped dramatically.

"Some companies are setting up call centres in Europe that provide a place for overflow calls and round-the-clock coverage," Mr Boyd said.

Heading the list of favourable sites, he said, were the Tagus Valley in north central Spain, Dublin and Northern Ireland.

"We see Northern Ireland as an emerging call-centre location because of labour supplies and the attractive government incentives," said Mr Boyd.

As a footstep to Asia, he singled out New Zealand as an attractive location. "It is English speaking, has a highly educated labour force, a sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure and a favourable exchange rate to the US dollar."

A trend he sees emerging is that of having a call centre alongside a distribution warehouse.

"Amsterdam lends itself to being a warehouse and call-centre location because it is a great example of a distribution hub with its airport and available commercial space," said Mr Boyd.

On the language front, Dutch people are generally multilingual - a plus for call-centre communication.

Within the US, bilingual Hispanic towns in the SouthWest are proving popular, such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Tucson. Tucson's total annual operating costs for a typical call centre are $12.16 million.

"Costs do vary by geography," said Mr Boyd. "Office rents vary. Heat and electricity costs can depend on the climate," he added.