Ireland is not going to be the next Calcutta or Mumbai. It’s not trying to be the back office customer service contact center mecca of the western world. Which is probably just as good.
What it does want to do is build its position as a leading European provider of the next business stage from contact centers (contact center plus, if you prefer), offering serious technical support and a full range of services well beyond just providing solutions. simple to simple solutions. customer inquiries Some are operated by contract providers, but most in Ireland are run by the companies they serve.
Here, the staff handles the entire internal communications system for large multinational operations. They not only handle traditional help desk calls, but also provide technical support to their own staff and business-to-business, dealing with HR issues like recruiting and sick leave, payroll systems, company accounts, as well as internal company communications on policies and strategies. , staff and customer information and the intranet function.
In its now sophisticated telecommunications sector, Ireland has 66 contact centers for a variety of companies including 3Com, American Airlines, AOL, Dell, eBay, GE Insurance, Google, Hewlett Packard, IBM, MBNA, Oracle, Starwood Hotels, Symantec and Xerox. – and that’s just an arbitrary sample.
These centers (Europeans call them Shared Services Centers, but most Americans will be more familiar with the term Managed Services) are where Ireland sees its growth potential, although the Irish have no intention of turning their backs on mainstream investment. in contact centers that provide banking and catalog services. clients for example.
Technology is changing the product. Just answering the phone is not enough these days. To be successful, the centers must serve the world in a number of roles.
Backlash from customers may boost Ireland’s efforts
A recent survey of 1,000 UK adults by contact center industry analysts ContactBabel found that 142 had switched providers because the one they had used a service abroad, while three in four said they felt more negative. towards their supplier if they used agents abroad.
Steve Morrell, Principal Analyst at ContactBabel, said in the report: “If UK companies do not address their customers’ concerns, the level of customer churn will rise and their profits will fall further.”
Therein lies a problem and, for Ireland, an opportunity. In India, university graduates, attracted by the prestige of contact center jobs, earn perhaps ten times the average salary, but still cost their employers only a tenth of an operation in Europe or the US. .
Hypothetically, that means that a typical bank with 12 million customers and revenue of $400 per customer each year would save more than $17 million by replacing 1,000 of its expensive call center staff with 1,000 in India. The downside is that the same hypothetical bank would need only about one percent of its customers to switch to another bank in protest at losing all those savings instantly.
“Ireland is the only native English-speaking member of the Eurozone,” says Brendan Haplin, International Media Manager at IDA, the Irish government agency that seeks inward investment from around the world. “Ireland offers a world-class advanced telecommunications infrastructure including vital bandwidth and hosting capacity, and we back all of this with strong support from IDA, both financial and practical.”
The appeal? Language and low taxes?
The landscape in Ireland (corporate and cultural) has attracted far more than its fair share, not only to European companies but also to American ones. “Ireland has changed dramatically in the last 10 or 20 years,” says Haplin. “We now have between 60 and 70 shared service centers that are multilingual, pan-European and transatlantic.”
We are talking about large companies of the size and scale of IBM or Dell. In general, these organizations are very happy with the quality of staff, quality of life and service delivery that they have found in Ireland. They bring in selected technical experts from the states and then use locally selected personnel to develop and expand the skill base.
These big carriers are evidence of success, not just because they stay there, but because they can signal significant cost reduction, increased efficiencies, better quality customer service, and a real boost in sales that ultimately leads to better returns. for shareholders.
Ireland, Haplin adds, offers an attractive package, complete with a low corporate tax of just 12.5%. It works hard to minimize red tape and instead engineer a low-risk, fast-start, high-return knowledge economy. “We have a well-developed environment for call center and shared services operations because we have all the basic ingredients: the skills and knowledge, the experience and availability of multilingual and IT-savvy staff, and the global strategic fit that it provides. facilities for companies to ‘follow the sun’ on a 24-hour model”.
A rising population bodes well for employers
While Ireland may deserve a place on a company’s shortlist of potential offshore locations today, what about tomorrow? Will the right talent be available, in sufficient numbers? According to Dr. William Harris, Director General of the Irish Science Foundation, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. “The key element in knowledge creation are intangible assets such as experience, insight, talent, passion, imagination, and persistence.
“We believe that investing in such skills is the best predictor of how successful Ireland could be,” adds Harris. “Ireland has a wealth of young talent ready to make science and engineering the next great wave of Irish innovation.”
Ireland is one of the few European countries to show an increase in its population, and some 260,000 people, 12.6% of the total workforce, are employed in business services. While the workforce population declines in other countries, portending real trouble ahead, Ireland is looking to grow a pool of young talent on par with that of the US.
[SIDEBAR] The Irish landscape: ready to compete
Ireland has changed and changed dramatically. Gone are those sad portrayals of girls in love bidding tearful goodbyes to men destined for a life in the New Worlds of America or Australia? They would make their fortunes and return to build a castle and raise a family in Kilkenny.
Over the past two decades, the Celtic Tiger has been making its way through the jungles of the global economy. It’s getting fatter, healthier, and voracious with every footprint it makes.
The atmosphere is hospitable
The quality of life is a fabulous balance between impressive landscapes and excellent leisure options. Golf courses, angling, cycling, camping, hiking and seeking out deserted bays along the rugged coastline are just a few of the possibilities to consider.
Real estate is cheap (except in the center of Dublin) and land is plentiful. Petrol is about half the price it is in the UK and the 12.5% corporation tax sits next to 39.5% in the US or 30% in the UK. Although the value added tax is 21%, it will not have much of an impact on companies whose profits are based on exporting outside the EU and the government has simplified the paperwork. If 85 percent of your goods or services are for export, then you will be exempt, so you don’t have to fill out forms to claim VAT.
The Irish are famous, and rightly so, for their warm welcome, and that extends not just to a pint of Guinness with a passing stranger, but also to those who have come to stay longer.
Unlike some of their European neighbors, the Irish are not bothered by the arrival of immigrant workers, but welcome them with open arms as a real and useful addition to the native skill base.
Location and politics provide a counterbalance
Air transport is reasonable but needs further development. The main airport is near Dublin and offers around 100 direct destinations around the world. There is a second international airport at Shannon and smaller, mostly short-haul, facilities in Cork, Belfast and Londonderry. Most international flights depart from Dublin or Shannon.
In terms of freight transport, ferry services are strong, but the distance from mainland Europe makes them slow. Although a crossing from Dublin to Holyhead on the Welsh coast is less than two hours, Normandy is 19 hours away. From Belfast and Larne in the north, there are quicker crossings to Scotland and England.
A long history of a sluggish agricultural economy meant that Ireland was slow to move into the 20th century, never mind the 21st. Outside of a few major cities, it remains a wonderfully unspoilt but also underdeveloped rural society.
Ireland entered the European Union with Objective One status, meaning its underdeveloped economic status entitled it to a whole package of major infrastructure grants to help it move quickly. Its strong rural culture saw the benefits of the Common Agricultural Policy, which instantly enabled farmers to access guaranteed markets and guaranteed prices for their produce, even if much of it ended up being dumped in mountains of butter and lakes of milk. Almost half of the total EU budget of €44.5 billion is spent on agricultural subsidies of one kind or another.
The maze of back roads gives Ireland much of its charm, but it’s not much use for the heavy trucks hauling huge loads of produce to markets around the world. Money from the European Union helped expand an infrastructure of motorways and trunk roads that was essential for economic growth.
All of this helped encourage new investors from other countries to set up facilities in Ireland. The government buoyed them up with attractive packages that lured companies like Dell, Xerox, Baxter International, Hertz and many others before they even reached contact centers.
But all that help from the Eurozone is gone now. The rise of the Celtic Tiger, the reality of economic growth, has forced Ireland to shift from being subsidized by the European Union to being a provider of subsidies to other emerging nations, including some of the 10 new countries whose membership it has brought to the European bloc. to 25 in total.