Move on future of call centre jobs imminent (From Western Telegraph)

Move on future of call centre jobs imminent

Two hundred call centre jobs temporarily saved after the collapse of ITV Digital could become permanent.

Manpower and 7C, joint operators of the Cleddau Call Centre, Pembroke Dock, are negotiating with telecommunications giant NTL to extend its contract beyond mid-August when the agreement is due to expire. Centre director Cathy Corboy indicated that an announcement could be made in the next seven days.

Our contract with NTL is temporary, but we are working closely with that client to make it otherwise. In the next week we will know how successful we have been on that front, she said.

Sales staff working on behalf of NTL are targeting ex-ITV Digital customers.

It is going very well. The staff are doing an excellent job and NTL is very pleased with the results that we have achieved for them, said Cathy Corboy.

It has been an ideal situation because we had an existing workforce with the knowledge and skill base they needed.

A number of potential clients are believed to be interested in locating to the centre.

One of them could be the consortium awarded the digital licences left vacant by the collapse of ITV Digital. On Thursday, the Independent Television Commission announced that a consortium led by the BBC and BSkyB had been given the go-ahead to launch a new digital terrestrial service this autumn.

We are ideally placed to assist this consortium with its out-sourced customer solutions, said Cathy Corboys.

Manpowers contracts manager at the site, Debbie Rainbow, made no apologies for the length of time it is taking to finalise any deals.

Out-source solutions are not something that can be implemented overnight. No organisation planning to hand over its business and all the responsibility for its customers is going to do so without going through a detailed process first.

Equally, we need to be sure that before moving forward there is a viable, sustainable business for us.

The site is leased from Pembrokeshire County Council and its operators admit it is expensive to run a facility with just a fifth of the workforce it was designed for.

The fact that we are still here demonstrates our commitment to the site and our confidence in the future, said Debbie Rainbow.