Article: 10th January 2007

DIFFERENT APPROACHES BY 2 DIRECTORY SERVICES ORGANISATIONS

Two of Britain's largest business services firms announce that they plan to expand their call centre operations but they have different strategies.  Yell are investing £3.5Million into a call centre in Newport, Wales while The 188 Group are to outsource their activity to India.

Yell have secured the facility for a 250 seat call centre in Newport's George Street as it expands its Yellow Pages 118 247 services. The centre in due to open in April 2007

The expansion, has received grant aid from the Welsh Assembly Government which is considered a big win for South Wales as the existing centre is in nearby Bristol across the M4 in England.  It is being seen as a welcome boost to the fortunes of the city, which in recent years has endured a number of high profile job losses.  It is hoped the new call centre will help revitalise employment opportunities alongside the city's multimillion pound regeneration.

Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks Andrew Davies said: "Newport is being promoted as a premier location for business and the decision by a company of Yell's calibre and world-class reputation to locate a new operation in the city centre is a resounding vote of confidence.

"Newport has for some time been at the vanguard of developments in what is a thriving and dynamic contact centre industry which now employs more than 24,000 people across Wales.

"The city is a recognised and well established hub of excellence in this sector offering a superb communication infrastructure and a high quality, skilled and adaptable workforce which was one of the deciding factors in Yell's choice of location."

Yell chief executive John Condron said: "I'm delighted that the success of Yellow Pages 118 247 means that we need a second call centre to expand our future call handling capability and to grow further the service through the recruitment of a new pool of talented, motivated people based in Wales.  "Our existing call centre team has worked extremely hard to develop the UK service in the last three years and we're very much looking forward to further development from our Newport site.

"As a reputable and responsible company we're very pleased to be playing a part also in the regeneration of the region."

Meanwhile, UK business services company, 118 Group, has signed a deal with Indian outsourcer BNKE who have performed their inbound directory assistance line for the 118 Group..

118 Group CEO Daniel Corby told reporters the company's UK operations are continuing to grow ahead of forecast and the additional space in India will help fuel domestic growth further. "We are not relocating UK jobs to India, simply creating additional roles in Asia, which will help to support the UK operations further through a period of high growth," he said.

118 Group operates one of the largest online directories in the UK, sold through telesales and inbound response from UK contact centers.

We at call-centres.com would like to take this opportunity to wish both Yell and 118 the best of success for their expansions.  Maybe, this time next year, we'll be able to answer the great debate of "onshore v offshore".
 

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