Employment growth in the Irish call centre industry is likely to continue ahead of target, according to the Industrial Development Authority. This is despite a UK report claiming advances in voice recognition technology could eliminate one fifth of jobs forecast over the next five years.
Research conducted by communications consultancy, OTR Group, indicates call centre employment could fall by 40 per cent if replaced with speech recognition technology.
However, a spokesman for IDA Ireland rejected the claims, saying voice recognition technology still has a very long way to go before it is practicable in the workplace. Speech recognition technology would allow people give computers spoken instructions over the telephone. "There are a lot of issues that need to be hammered out with voice recognition, and we have to wait and see how it's going to emerge in business applications." He added the call centre industry is in a state of rapid change, in the same way the electronics industry was a number of years ago. "Our analysis is that e-commerce will probably be just as influential in shifting call centre business strategies. Voice recognition may just be an integral part of that." Ireland currently retains 29 per cent of the pan-European call centre market, with 65 companies and more than 7,000 people working in the sector.
The IDA forecasts this will reach 10,000 by the end of next year. It says these numbers will be filled by call centres already operating here, and do not take into account other companies planning to locate here.
The Xerox' Welcome Centre in Blanchardstown currently employs 400 people and, according to its general manager, Mr Enda D'Arcy, it is on target to increase this to 600 people by the end of 2000.
"If we look at voice recognition, it's not with a view to reducing jobs, but making the journey for the customer simpler. We can't see it taking over the human side, but it might be used from a linguistic perspective to automatically direct callers to their appropriate language group." He added that the take up would be customer driven, as with the application of any other technology.
Mr Liam Young, managing director of Conduit Ireland, says the addition of voice recognition technology may have the effect of increasing the market - by attracting new customers to it.
Conduit Ireland employs 250 people at its East Point Business Park directory enquiry centre.
