Once on the phone Lydia's soft American lilt kicks into play. "Good morning, sir, thank you for calling the IBM PC help centre. My name is Lydia . . . " She smiles as she describes the twang she's developed over the past two years.

Always, she says, "you are very, very polite." Based in IBM's call centre in Blanchardstown, Dublin, Lydia Gilligan handles between 25 and 30 calls from all over the US each day. "It can be challenging and fun as well. If a person is laughing and funny then you know what way to take the call. You just use your common-sense.

"Some people are easy to deal with, some aren't. It's like life. You become good at handling any situation."

"We start with the New Yorkers. It's first thing in the morning for them when I start at one," says Gilligan, who works as a technical support agent at the IBM call centre.

"After the morning calls it can be anywhere. There's also a call centre in Florida - they take half the calls.

"There are great incentives to do well. There's a real, young environment here. It's a great place to work. It's like being in college - there's a great buzz around."

Customers can range from children to grannies to businessmen, she says. They will often send little gifts to the girl who has helped them install a modem or retrieve a lost file - a T-shirt, a pen, a CD.

"Sometimes you can get really nice letters from customers. I had an old man from New York, he sent me a religious book," she recalls with a smile.

After the Leaving Cert at St Dominic's School in Ballyfermot, Dublin, Gilligan was offered a place on an arts degree programme in TCD. "But I didn't take it up," she says. "I wanted to talk to people." So, she did a PLC course and studied journalism. Then she went to London for the summer and worked in a hotel.

When she came home, she heard about a course in teleservices at Ballyfermot Senior College. "I realised that the industry is just growing and that it's going to grow and grow." She found the course very helpful, including time spent in La Rochelle, France, as part of her language training.

"The course really helped me to work as part of a team," she says. "It taught me to work under pressure as well."

On IBM's US consumer line, she says, "we support consumer PCs, called Aptivas. If a computer breaks down, they call us and we can fix it for them on the phone.

"A customer may be quite irritated, so you have to calm him or her down. They may be installing something and, no matter what happens, it won't go. So, when they ring you they are really, really frustrated. You just have to be patient and calm with them and usually you can get it done in the end."

So that the customer support service can be improved and monitored, she explains "our calls are also randomly recorded in here. It sounds scary, but it's positive because how else are you going to know what you are doing.

"You can pick out what works and what is positive in it. You get used to it after a while. It's a good laugh listening to yourself."

In order to answer all the questions, Gilligan has to know her way around a computer. She can assemble one from scratch. "We have about 10 different types of computer. It's a really, really good thing to get into. You will be promoted. You have to be able to talk to people, and deal with them under pressure - and you have to be very dynamic.

"Every couple of months you have new products coming out. You learn quickly. When we first started we were given five months training in basic software and hardware training. And then we're given exams. I've been on the phones for 14 months and there's really nothing that I don't know.

"It's a good laugh. In the next couple of years we're going to be able to see them as we're talking to them. That should be fun. With video conferencing it's happening already."

Gilligan has just been promoted as a consumer team leader. Her new job will not involve as much phone work. She will have to compile operations reports, keep a check on satisfaction statistics and keep her team up to speed. She will also be expected to handle the toughest calls.

Where did she get her flair for dealing with people on the phone? "It's just the way I was brought up. Four girls and a little brother, I'm in the middle. We're just a very vocal family. We were never told to be quiet and sit in the corner."