One of the key players in the Glasgow call centre arena is American company Excell Multimedia, which has its European headquarters in the heart of the city, close to the good vibrations coming out of this dynamic, high-growth industry.
The company has two call centres in Glasgow - at West George Street and Waterloo Street employing just under 800 ''agents''. A third centre operates out of Glenrothes, in Fife, with a staff of 60.
Anne McKinnon is the managing director of the goodship Excell that she directs from an office in Nelson Mandela Place, part of the imposing Athenaeum building.
The company is going places fast with annual growth of 12% and turnover of #12m. Currently two clients are talking to Excell about providing more centres in Scotland and 100 new jobs are in the pipeline. On the European front, the company is managing a centre in Holland and looking to expand into Spain, France and Ireland.
The centres, which handle an amazing 7.5 million calls a month and 250,000 calls a day, offer a diverse range of services - UK and international directory inquiries, emergency services, multi-lingual customer contact, billing and collection, customer acquisition, technical support, trial and testing.
''The company has a lot of experience globally with key people having worked professionally in technology, finance and telecoms before joining Excell,'' said McKinnon.
''Our HQ is in Phoenix, Arizona, where the firm was founded in 1993. The UK operation was launched in Glasgow two years later and since then the company has gone from strength to strength.''
The rapid growth in the call centre sector has come about because of deregulation in the telecoms field, explained McKinnon. ''If you think about Europe, and that includes us here in the UK, of course, there's an awful lot of chaos and an awful lot of opportunity.
''Our remit in Glasgow is Europe and currently we have a team in Paris negotiating a contract. Our operation is multi-lingual, which widens our scope.''
What does Excell have to offer a client in a call centre? ''We can supply basically everything you would need to make the centre happen. Our skill is in people - recruiting, training, managing and developing,'' said McKinnon.
McKinnon has the right pedigree for a European director; she was personal assistant to BT supremo Sir Peter Bonfield before she joined Excell two years ago.
Another former BT executive is Phil Worms, Excell's director of operations and planning for Europe. His role is to look at the operation overall and see what he can do to improve the working environment.
''It's a day-to-day scene. For example, the condition of PCs, faulty furniture, chairs. My colleagues run the call centres, I provide the building blocks to ensure they can concentrate on their job. It's also down to me to introduce and develop the training programmes.''
The final word goes to MD McKinnon: ''We work with the Call Centre Association and other professional bodies to set up qualifications from NVQ upwards and we are currently in talks with a Scottish university about an MBA qualification that would contain perhaps a year's experience in call centre work.''
''We also have 100 employees with Professional Development Awards. The company also has an Investors in People Award and the two ticks for being positive about the disabled.''
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