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Study Shows Contact Centers are Solid Contributors to Ireland's Economy

September 12, 2011

Contact centers are proving to be a bright spot in the otherwise dismal economy in Ireland. It appears, as well, that the contact center star will continue to shine even brighter for that country in the coming years.  


News came Friday from Contact Centre Clinic that Contact Centre Management Association of Ireland (CCMA) is reporting that there has been significant growth in Ireland’s contact center sector over the course of the last year, not only in the number of people employed but in the revenue Irish contact centers brought in as well.

The report said that there are now more than 29,000 people employed by more than 100 contact centers throughout the country. Fifty-two percent of the contact centers represented in the research, which was conducted in the second quarter of this year, also reported that their revenues rose in 2010 and between now and the next three years, nearly three quarters of the respondents to the survey think their contact center revenues will continue to increase.

It could be these positive revenue reports are the result of the high volume of customer interactions the survey respondents said they received in 2010. Combined, the report said Irish contact centers completed in excess of 150 million customer interactions in 2010, with a little more than half (59 percent) of those interactions being telephone calls, two times as many of which were inbound rather than outbound. Only 16 percent of the reported customer interactions were characterized as electronic communications (SMS and email), although respondents said in a year they expect “significant” growth in this area.

Growth in the adoption of new technology by contact centers in Ireland was a big focus of the report. In fact, Contact Centre Management Association of Ireland’s research indicated that contact centers in Ireland are embracing new technology and are now moving away from traditional telephone-only customer interactions. It was reported that they are beginning to use different apps, the Internet and interactive voice response (IVR) to help their customers. 

Leaders in Ireland who commented on the results of CCMA’s contact center research were all impressed and pleased by the positive contributions this sector is making to the country’s economy, but all were equally concerned that the country’s contact centers continue on their growth path by continuing to adopt and invest in new information technologies and broadband, as well as to increasingly place emphasis on the development of multilingual skills in its workforce. (The report said that 37 percent of respondents to the survey already require multilingual skills of their employees.) Gaining government support for contact centers and funding for continued contact center research were also hoped-for outcomes as a result of the facts revealed by the CCMA research.      

Perhaps best summing up everyone’s reaction to the study’s revelations was Emmanuel Dowdall, global department manager; Content, Consumer & Business Services Division of IDA Ireland. Dowdall said,  “The customer contact industry continues to be an invaluable source of employment creation from multinational companies locating in Ireland across a range of industry sectors including finance, IT, life sciences and e-commerce. As an increasingly important component in the way companies differentiate themselves, the customer contact center has evolved into a multi-functional, multilingual environment, an early adaptor of new digital technologies and servicing a global customer base. This valuable research will help to inform the continued evolution and growth of this important sector in Ireland.”

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Linda Dobel is a ContactCenterSolutions Contributor. She has been an editor in the contact center space for more than 25 years, and has the distinction of being the founding editor of Customer Inter@ction Solutions (CIS) magazine. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell



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