The rise of the call centre in the UK is continuing - providing rich pickings for FM companies in the process - with two companies this week announcing plans to create over 2,000 jobs in the technical telephone support area.
Needing 24-hour staffing, up-to-date technology and a high level of management and co-ordination, call centres are ideal targets for FM companies, especially with the trend for locating them away from traditional business centres to keep labour costs down.
Ireland, Wales, the north of England and Scotland have all seen impressive job-creation recently, as computer, communications and technical corporations look at call centres to massively reduce their staff and infrastructure costs - and FM companies are often key to those plans.
And now, the UK's biggest cable operator Cable and Wireless Communications has confirmed it is bringing 1,200 new jobs to Swansea in south west Wales, with the city being selected as the location for a major new customer service centre.
Having fought off competition from Waterford in Ireland, Swansea will now become a "flagship" operation when it opens in October, becoming the biggest job-creating project seen in the city for more than a decade.
Using the latest technology, the centre will deal with a range of customer inquiries, sales and billing queries needed to support the digital TV service to be rolled out across the UK on 1 July. CWC, which is 52% owned by Cable & Wireless, already has call centres in Brighton, Manchester and Glasgow.
In a separate move, fellow cable and communications company NTL is to create 874 jobs at a new hi-tech call centre in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam announced the jobs boost, backed by the province's Industrial Development Board (IDB), at the company's headquarters in East Belfast.
The IDB has offered £3.8m of selective financial assistance towards the project, with the company making a capital investment of £4.5m and an additional overall investment of £15.6m in the project.
NTL is also proposing to spend £181m on its infrastructure in Northern Ireland over the next four years.
NTL managing director Owen Lamont said: "NTL is at the leading edge of the communications industry, and Northern Ireland provides an excellent base from which to serve and support increasingly sophisticated business and consumer markets in Europe.
"We are investing £1bn in Northern Ireland - that speaks for itself about our confidence in the business opportunity it offers."
