TSC to expand in UK and India

Call centre firm Telecom Service Centres is looking to expand in both the UK and India, having unveiled massive jumps in profits and sales.

The firm said it expected to notch up yet another year of double-digit growth as it reported a 12 per cent rise in turnover to 55.1 million for the year to 31 August.

Profits at the Larbert-based firm also rocketed – leaping by 3m to 5.1m, according to the latest set of accounts, to be filed with Companies House this month.

TSC, which merged with Indian rival Hero Group last year, said it was looking for new property in both the UK and India to expand its existing call centre offering, to include back office processing as well as call-centre work.

Chief executive Ken Hills, who is currently in Delhi on a five-day tour of the firm’s Indian operations, said TSC was already eying a couple of potential acquisitions in Scotland and the north of England.

“We are looking to make an acquisition in the next 24 months. Whether that will be in the UK or in India, we just don’t know yet,” he said.

“We’d like to expand our customer base into financial services and the travel and leisure sector.”

TSC, which has nine centres across the UK, stretching from Aviemore to Yorkshire, is Scotland’s largest call-centre firm.

Hills added: “There’s a lot depending on what happens in the broader economy right now. However, we haven’t yet seen too much impact and I am expecting to see double-digit organic growth figures for the current financial year. If we make an acquisition, that will be on top of that existing organic growth.”

He said the Indian merger had allowed the company, which was formed in Bute in the mid-1990s, to reach potential clients all over the world, bringing in large international customers such as Electrolux in the US and Australia.

Current clients of the company, which saw its staff grow by about 300 to 3,068, include Vodafone, T-Mobile, HSBC and Hewlett Packard.

The accounts revealed that the highest-paid director, believed to be Hills, pocketed 179,000, excluding pension contributions – exactly the same amount as the previous year.

Hills said: “While the financial figures are important, TSC is also about people, and I am equally proud that in the last three years we have doubled our staff.”

He added that staffing levels had risen from just 1,600 in the three-year period.

30 Jan 2008

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