Contact centres
According to a survey by the Call Centre Association (December 2003), over two-thirds of UK call centres have experienced growth in the past year and the Department of Trade and Industry (May 2004) has predicted 150,000 new call centre agent positions by 2007. This has happened despite recent concerns about the migration of jobs to offshore locations such as India and the Philippines. The multilingual sector within the UK is often considered to be a key selling point for the call centre industry and the expansion of the EU will further drive growth over the coming months and years – the UK is already the European market leader in contact centres with many EU countries choosing to base their operations here.
A number of recruitment agencies, such as Manpower, are now specialising in recruitment to multilingual call centres. There is also a growing need, particularly within the Public Sector, to serve members of UK communities in their own native languages.
e-skills UK, the sector skills council for contact centres, is working with CILT, the National Centre for Languages, to support language skills in this industry.
Source: Manpower UK Limited and e-skills UK
Case studies
Matt uses French working in a contact centre in Cheshire.
Rani speaks Tamil in her job at a local government contact centre in London.
Michael uses his French and Italian at an IBM helpdesk in Scotland.
Links
e-skills UK
As the Sector Skills Council responsible for Contact Centres, e-skills UK can provide information on careers opportunities.