Call centre jobs bounce back in the North East.

Byline: Karen Dent

NORTH East call centre group Garlands is creating 50 jobs after securing more business with mobile phone network 3. The jobs, to be based at Garlands' South Shields call centre, come after the group shed around 200 staff from various offices earlier this year as customers Orange and Vodafone acted to cut costs in the face of the economic downturn.

However, Garlands has also been creating jobs elsewhere and has already revealed plans to open a back office administration centre in South Africa, which will employ around 500.

Garlands signed up as a telesales partners with 3 in August and originally had around 30 staff in South Shields to service the contract. However, the work has grown quickly and staff numbers now need to increase to around 80.

Garlands Call Centres chief executive Chey Garland said: "We're delighted to announce this expansion.

We have already built a strong relationship with 3 and have invested heavily in quality and training to ensure that we meet and exceed the targets we've been set - and build for the future."

Kerry Howells, business development manager at 3, said: "We've been very pleased with the speed at which Garlands set up the operation and with the commitment the company has shown towards delivering great results."

The posts at South Shields will be at team manager, sales coach and outbound sales advisor levels.

The company is aiming to recruit people with previous face-to-face sales, telephone sales and sales management experience.

Garlands employs around 2,000 people in the North East at call centres in Hartlepool, Stockton, Middlesbrough and South Shields, working with clients including mobile phone networks and the NHS.

The South Shields centre, which opened last year, is the group's newest in the region. Between them, the four centres handle around 36 million customer calls each year.

However, the contact centre industry has been affected by the same problems being experienced in the wider economy.

In addition to Orange and Vodafone scaling back their work in the North East, there have been widespread redundancies in the banking sector which is a major employer of call centre staff.

Garlands itself, which was founded by Ms Garland more than two decades ago from an attic room in her home in Middlesbrough, reported a fall in turnover and profits in its 2008 results.

Turnover dropped from pounds 48.5m to pounds 44.3m, while pre-tax profits shrank from pounds 2m to pounds 476,000.