200 jobs to be created at Liverpool call centre

Two hundred  jobs at a Liverpool customer contact centre are to be created as part of a £4m investment by new owners.

The Contact People in Wavertree currently employ 50 staff handling thousands of inbound calls round the clock.

The Call Centre group recently acquired the 19-year-old firm, and its Head of HR, Katherine Horton, said a three-year plan was expected to see staff numbers rise to 250.

She said: “We are aiming to position Liverpool as a centre of excellence for highly complex customer services and incident management calls and would like the business to be seen as a key provider of these services to customers in the city and surrounding region.

“We are absolutely committed to keeping the ethos of The Contact People, and building on its strengths.

“Many of the staff have been with the company for 10 years or more, and senior management even longer, and there’s a depth of skill and experience which is very rare in this sector and will be a key factor in growing our business in the region.”

The parent group – with turnover approaching £40m and over 500 staff at five  locations – is one of the UK’s largest privately-owned businesses in the call handling and outsourced customer service sector, with a broad range of private and public sector clients.

“One of the strong points about the Liverpool operation is the staff’s high level of emotional intelligence. They don’t work off scripts, but use frameworks to make sure the customers are helped and advised as quickly as possible,” added Ms Horton.

“When a caller is in a complex situation, they want support – not to have to go through a list of questions. This is one of the strengths of The Contact People approach.”

The Contact People provide inbound customised call-handling, emergency call-out support, social media and live chat handling, as well as managing multilingual calls and card payments.