Teleservices firm ICT Group is hiring for inbound customer service agents at its St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada contact center. Radio station VOCM reports that the facility has and continues to grow rapidly since its opening in 2002.

 

The staff expansion appears to be a sign of future volume growth at the contact center following plans announced by ICT Group in January to realign its services to focus on building its more predictable customer care, technology, and BPO services. In turn it will limit telesales activities to accommodate certain large strategic client relationships, and cease market research services. It will also shift more of its European and Australian work offshore, mirroring a successful move in the U.S. in 2008.

 

The realignment will result, however, the partial or complete closure of six unspecified U.S. and Canadian contact centers, plus reduced capacity at its European and Australian contact centers.

 

The St. John’s site’s growth in inbound customer care appears to ensure its prospects. ICT Group had closed another center in the province, in Carbonear, in June 2008. The company has 40+ operations centers across five continents.

 

Ensuring the future of the St. John’s contact center and the others remaining are that the realignment and resulting closures and reductions will save the company $6 million-$7 million annually, which will help cut its losses and improve its finances. The firm had a net loss of $23.3 million in 2008.

 

The core business focus will enhance ICT Group’s picture by letting strong growth in this sector shine through. While total revenue for full year 2008 fell to $428.2 million from $453.6 million in 2007, the core business revenue reached $369.6 million, up 2 percent from full year 2007. On a constant currency basis—accounting for a sharp spike in the value of the U.S. dollar in late 2008--core business revenue was up 3 percent year-over-year.

 

Core revenue production volume at ICT Group’s centers hit 17 million hours in 2008, up 10 percent from 2007 and climbed to 4.5 million hours in the 2008 fourth quarter, up 15 percent from the comparable period last year. In contrast the non-core production volume accounted for 571,000 hours, down 54 percent year-over-year and 29 percent sequentially.

 

ICT Group currently expects its core business revenue to be up 6 to 8 percent for the 2009 first quarter compared to the same period last year on a constant currency basis but flat when this factor is not taken into account. Total revenue for the quarter is expected to range from $92 to $96 million, down from $108.7 million in last year’s first quarter driven by a 70 percent decline in revenue in its non-core business that it is reducing or exiting.

 

“Despite the economic uncertainties ahead, we believe that ICT GROUP is solidly positioned to achieve significant operating leverage in 2009 through increased productivity and greater workstation utilization and the expected decline in SG&A [selling, general, and administrative] costs as a percentage of revenue beginning in the second quarter,” says company chair and CEO John Brennan.

 

“Excluding the negative foreign currency impact, which we project at approximately $20 million, we expect that core business revenue will increase 8 percent to 10 percent in 2009, on core production volume growth of 10 percent to 12 percent. We plan to achieve these results by leveraging existing client relationships, utilizing our offshore resources to support international as well as U.S.-based clients while minimizing capital expenditures.”