Webhelp UK centre opened with 800 staff and the promise of more jobs to come.

Glasgow’s newest employers today (Monday April 16) officially opened their state-of-the-art contact centre in the city and vowed in time to bring 900 jobs to their Atlantic Quay site.

Webhelp UK, Scotland’s leading customer management company, announced last month that they were coming to Glasgow after expanding their contract to provide sales and service support to Sky.

Four weeks after that announcement Steve MacDiarmid, Sky Director of Customer Sales with Webhelp UK CEO David Turner, cut the ribbon of the new site as Webhelp UK staff officially started handling calls for the client.

By the time shift patterns are fully established this week 800 Webhelp UK staff will be on site. However these numbers are set to grow as Webhelp UK steadily ramps up the work done in their three-floor site in Glasgow’s Financial District.

Looking to the future, Webhelp UK Chief Executive David Turner said: “I am delighted that we have managed to get this site up and running just a month after we announced we were coming here.

“It is a fantastic achievement to have 800 staff working here so quickly.

“However the site here can accommodate more and we are now actively recruiting to add another 100 or so staff in the next six to eight weeks.”

We’ve got a long and successful history of working in Scotland so we’re very pleased to be partnered with Webhelp UK to open this new customer centre in Glasgow – Steve MacDiarmid, Sky

Steve MacDiarmid, Director of Customer Sales, Sky said: “We’ve got a long and successful history of working in Scotland so we’re very pleased to be partnered with Webhelp UK to open this new customer centre in Glasgow. Providing first class customer service is of utmost importance so we’re very happy this site is opening to help maintain our excellent standards.”

Founded in Rothesay in the mid 90s with only seven employees, Webhelp UK are now one the UK’s biggest in their sector.

Glasgow is now their seventh Scottish site, joining Rothesay, Greenock, Dunoon, Kilmarnock, Aviemore and their HQ Falkirk. They also have three major centres in England in Warrington, Dearne Valley (Rotherham) and Derby, which opened in January.

Current UK employee numbers are almost 5500 with over 3000 in Scotland. Both figures are scheduled to grow through 2012.

We are delighted to be based in Glasgow and bringing jobs to Scotland’s biggest city – David Turner, Webhelp UK

Glasgow is the fourth Webhelp UK site to work on Webhelp UK’s expanding Sky contract – joining Falkirk, Greenock and their recently opened facility in Derby – and David Turner welcomed his company’s strengthening relationships with this and other blue chip clients

He explained “We now have long-term strategic partnerships with Sky and Vodafone which underline our growing strength in the UK customer management sector and augur well for the future.

“We are delighted to be based in Glasgow and bringing jobs to Scotland’s biggest city.

“I can promise our new employees they are joining a company which will offer them every opportunity to maximise their talent.

“We believe in giving our staff every chance to show exactly what they are capable of. We want to make sure our employees think of Webhelp UK as a career, not just a job and have a series of in-house training and development courses – right up to Management University level – where we want to groom and nurture our managers of tomorrow.

“We look forward to our Glasgow site becoming an increasing vital part of the Webhelp UK network”.