Ireland's low costs, modern phone lines and quality of life are attracting the call centers of foreign firms

By STEVE ZWICK /DUBLIN

ne thing about Dublin," says Oracle sales manager Morten Calisch, passing a string of Danish flags in the Scandinavian section of his phone room, "It's not hard getting people to move here." Roughly 200 headsets are attached to an equal number of salespeople and technicians speaking more than 20 languages in the 5,500 sq m center. The headsets are wired into desktop PCs and a central routing system that ensures the 100,000 monthly calls from 29 countries land in the right part of the room.

Out the window and over the sea in offices, villas, chalets, huts and apartments in Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Africa are the customers these operators are serving. Someone in Italy asks a question, and hands start flying over keyboards in Dublin. "This is an $80 million complex, one of the most advanced telecommunications centers in the world," Calisch says in his slight Norwegian accent. "But you just have to drive 10 minutes, and it's like going back into another time."

With fewer phone lines per capita than any E.U. country except Portugal, Ireland has built a thriving business in pan-European call centers. There are 50 such operations clustered around Dublin and more opening in Cork to the south and in Belfast in Northern Ireland. When you call America Online from France to find out why e-mail's down today, or phone Lufthansa from the Netherlands to book a flight, the voice on the other end belongs to someone sitting in a cubicle here. The Irish Republic's Industrial Development Agency (I.D.A.) says these international call centers employ 7,000 people, a figure which is expected to rise 50% in five years. A bigger payoff will come if this business helps make Ireland the Internet hub of Europe. That would generate 40,000 more jobs over 10 years.

"We are simply reaping the benefits of our own backwardness," says Padraig McGrath, a tweedy student of communications at Cork City College. "We never had an industrial revolution, so an industrial culture was never ingrained. Irish culture is a service industry. We've always been particularly good at selling our culture, and that's what we're doing." But who's selling to whom? Of the people working the phones, 70% are from the countries they serve, and Dubliners seem tickled that so many people want to move to Ireland after centuries of seeing their own best and brightest leave. Last year, Ireland gained 15,000 new inhabitants. The last time that happened might have been when the Vikings paid their final visit in A.D. 917.

Frenchman Johan Guenver is typical of the latest invaders. He answered a Paris newspaper ad for a technical support position with Gateway. "The recruiter kept asking me if moving was a problem," he recalls. "The fact is, Ireland is the reason I answered the ad." Guenver shares a house with a Swiss, a Swede and another Frenchman, all of whom work at Gateway. Germany's Kathleen Saupe popped over on a whim and liked it so much she dyed her hair red and stayed awhile. "It's even better than I expected," she gushes. "The people are so friendly, so open-minded."

The I.D.A.'s business development manager, Gerard Sharkey, appreciates the flattery, but says Irish natives will probably earn more of the phone jobs in the future. "Most of these young foreign nationals are just here for a little cultural exchange, and by the time they start heading home companies will see how strong our language skills are in Ireland," he says. "We put 7% of our GDP into education, and a good part of that is language training. We're also funding two-year courses in teleservice, where students can go abroad to perfect their language skills and live in the country of their choice. This will begin to pay off."

But Oracle's Calisch believes expatriates will still be in demand in Irish call centers. "To sell a complex product like a $40,000 database package, you need to develop complex relationships," he says. "This means understanding a culture as well as a language, and very few non-native speakers can develop this level of proficiency." Why locate in Ireland at all? There are lots of reasons, says Calisch: "First, a central location gives you better quality control. Second, this is a great place to live, which makes it easy to attract the kind of qualified foreigners we need. Third, the native language is English. Fourth, I've never seen such dedication on the part of government when it comes to making things happen. It's a great achievement."

Achievement is the right word, for the phone rooms didn't pop up by accident. Since the late '80s, the state telephone company Telecom Eireann has pumped about $6 billion into international phone links, springing Ireland from the lazy days of rotary dials and party lines to the lightning age of digital transmission almost overnight. The I.D.A. examined 72 different growth niches and decided that a variety of factors--Ireland's low labor costs and cheap office and residential rents, its new (and inexpensive) telecommunications links, along with high education standards and a growing software industry--made international phone centers a natural.

Using the success of early pioneers like Dell, which opened a 200-person shop in Bray in 1992, the I.D.A. began pitching companies like Oracle and American Airlines, which at that time had operations scattered all over Europe. American Airlines says consolidating in Ireland will save $20 million in 10 years. Telecom Eireann also set up a Call Centre Sector to service existing centers in Ireland and to recruit new ones abroad. With all that activity, labor costs have begun to rise in Dublin as companies bid for seasoned workers. The I.D.A. staff have been trying to encourage centers in other parts of the country, where they say the potential is just as great as in Dublin. Sharkey says financial services are the next target, and his eyes light up when he discusses the 5,000-strong operation American discount broker Charles Schwab runs in Phoenix, Ariz.

In Northern Ireland, former British Telecom subsidiary BT Northern Ireland is erecting a $14-million phone room in Belfast, with funds from the province's Industrial Development Board (I.D.B.), which in turn has been running a successful international campaign of its own to attract phone centers. U.S.-based software developer Stream International consolidated its European call centers into one 500-person operation in Londonderry last year, and Britain's Abbey National bank is phasing in a 400-person center in Belfast.

London-based Datamonitor Consulting says Ireland accounts for only 1% of Europe's population but 3% of its telephone agents. The Irish also boast the biggest call centers in Europe, more than twice the average size of those in the U.K., Germany and the Netherlands, three of its nearest competitors in the sector. Half of all Irish agents work in centers with 250 or more people. The I.D.A.'s Sharkey says this helps create a hub effect that can be used to trap Internet business. Predicting how fast Net commerce will grow is impossible, but any place with low rents, good telecommunications links and a literate work force is bound to win more than its share of the increase. "We've got all those ingredients now," says Sharkey. And the global business community is just taking notice.