BELFAST BRIEFING:A French call centre is set to create 400 jobs in the North and local firm Gem plans 900 more

BONJOUR NEWRY – au revoir Ohio.

It may not have been the exact voice message that Telepeformance intended to leave when it created more than 600 jobs in the North last week and a subsidiary axed 400 in the United States.

But the Paris-headquartered group, which operates 248 contact centres across the globe, left no one in any doubt about the potential it sees in the North with its latest multimillion-pound investment.

Teleperformance has two contact centres in Northern Ireland – one in Newry and another in Bangor.

Its Newry operation has just secured a new multimillion-pound investment boost from the French group which will propel it forward to become Telepeformance’s flagship centre in the United Kingdom.

By contrast Teleperformance USA, a subsidiary of the French group, has just informed 400 people in Fairborn, Ohio, they have been made redundant.

It is quite a role reversal for the North to be celebrating a jobs boost in the current grim economic climate.

Unemployment continues to rise sharply each month with rural towns and communities the worst hit by the marked slowdown in the local economy.

The job losses implemented by Teleperformance USA were the direct result of a contract which had been cancelled and had nothing to do with the investment boost in the North.

It remains a coup for both for Newry and for Northern Ireland regardless of what is happening across the Atlantic – particularly in light of the fact that the French group operates contact centres in 46 countries.

Why then did it choose Northern Ireland out of a host of other potential destinations to expand in, particularly during this investment-hungry time?

According to Jeff Smith, chairman and chief executive of Teleperformance, the answer is pretty straightforward.

“As a customer service focused business, the people we employ are the key to our success,” Smith said.

Teleperformance believes it has found something special in its workforce in Northern Ireland and it feels it will “be able to attract a similar calibre of people to support our strategic growth plans”.

If that is not one of the clearest endorsements yet of Northern Ireland as an investment location then local government economic development agencies should pack up their bags and head south.

It helped the North’s case that Teleperformance had a well-established track record in Northern Ireland – it knows the landscape and had an existing relationship with key economic development agencies.

The French group has been doing business here for more than 11 years. It employs 900 people in Bangor and is expected to employ a projected 1,060 in Newry by 2011.

Invest Northern Ireland offered Teleperformance more than £3 million of financial support towards the latest investment in Newry which was also an attractive financial incentive to expanding in the North.

But more importantly Telepeformance’s “positive experiences” of Northern Ireland helped secure a vital injection of new investment at a time when other companies are cutting back on budgets and axing jobs.

The French group is not the only organisation which recognises the North has a lot to offer when it comes to these lean economic times.

It is cost-competitive from both a people and a location perspective and it has a hard-earned reputation for delivering high-quality and well-priced outsourced services.

Take the example of Gem, a call centre which also confirmed plans last week to expand its operation in the North.

Gem, which is privately owned, currently employs more than 1,000 people but it wants to create a further 900 jobs over the next three years.

Philip Cassidy, one of the founders of the company and its managing director, said that Gem was a “home-grown success” and it intended to build on that success.

Cassidy believes that Northern Ireland can now gain vital ground against competitors, particularly in the euro zone, because it is in a position to deliver the same, if not better, service at attractive prices.

So listen carefully – next time you pick up your phone, do not be surprised if the voice that says hello is from Northern Ireland.

Chances are you could be hearing a lot more from the North in the very near future.