Audit of Scotland's contact centre industry

A new study of Scotland's contact centre industry - the first since the 2008 financial crisis - has found the sector to be showing excellent resilience.

The audit was carried out by the University of Strathclyde's Professor Phil Taylor, an internationall recognised expert on the contact centre industry.

The audit's key findings are split into seven categories:

• Profile of the Scottish market
• Scotland - onshore and nearshore delivery
• Outsourcing
• Sector delivery
• A skilled and stable workforce
• Impact of economic slowdown
• Multi-channel deliver and automation

The findings include:

• The contact centre industry in Scotland shows remarkable resilience
• There are still 400 centres in Scotland and employment has grown by 4000 since 2008 to over 90,000
• Many high profile companies have opened or have decided to locate significant new facilities in Scotland, including John Lewis Partnership, Tesco Personal Finance, Virgin Money, MoreThan, Vertex and H&M
• Contact centres are dispersed across the country, from the urban heartlands of central Scotland, to far-flung communities in the Highlands and Islands and the Borders
• Overall costs in Scotland have been estimated at 70% compared to London and the Home Counties of England
• Indian companies have a growing share of the Scottish marketplace. Intelenet, Wipro and Hinduja Global Services have commenced operations since 2008 and Hero BPO is an established presence, having acquired Scottish outsourcer Telecom Service Centres and its seven Scottish sites, in 2005
• Scotland is thriving as a premier location for multilingual services - 3.5 per cent of the Scottish workforce are now dedicated to providing foreign languages services to all parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa
• In contrast to 2008, when certain specific skill sets were relatively difficult to obtain, no employer reported any difficulty in recruiting high quality talent