New call centre to create 200 jobs

Waterford-based Rigney Dolphin plans to create 200 jobs at a new €5 million customer support centre in the city.

The company, which already employs about 900 staff at three facilities, hopes to open the 9,000sq m (30,000sq ft) centre in early August. The jobs will be in customer service, relationship management and telemarketing.

"One of the issues we've had recently is that we haven't been able to take on additional work," said chief executive Celine Fitzgerald. "This will address that for us and we have one or two new contracts that we will land in September or October."

The new jobs will be created over a 12-month period.

Rigney Dolphin was set up in 1990 by Waterford-based psychologist Frank Dolphin, who is the company's chairman.

The company earned profits of €1.6 million last year on turnover of about €22 million. Its main business is operating customer support centres for clients, but it also has a small recruitment division in Dublin, whose clients include Bank of Ireland and Irish Life & Permanent.

The company employs 250 people at a Vodafone call centre in Dundalk, Co Louth. In Dublin, it has 450 staff at support centres for Vodafone and Meteor.

More than 200 staff are employed in Waterford, where it has contracts with car brands BMW, Peugeot, Hyundai, Fiat and Alpha Romeo; waste management company Greenstar; and telecoms group Perlico.

Ms Fitzgerald said the company was looking at securing contracts to operate customer support centres in Ireland on behalf of UK-based companies.

"It's a market that we'll be looking at more and more," she said. "A lot of UK companies are moving away from the idea of basing call centres in India and other parts of Asia."