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Making a French Connection:
American Express, Disney
Companies establishing call centers in France benefit from the fact that the country has the second-largest number of native speakers of foreign languages in Europe. In fact, about 26 percent of the French population speaks English fluently. And France, like many European nations, has high education levels.

"As call centers have become more prevalent in places like Ireland and the UK, companies are going on the continent more to recruit the labor they need," TARP's Jeffrey Maszal says. "And what countries like France and Germany are doing now to market their inbound call center capability is emphasize the very high level of education in their labor pools."

American Express, Disneyland Paris, Eastman Kodak, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft and Texas Instruments are some of the leading companies that have tapped France for call center operations.

Each day thousands of people from all over Europe call Disneyland Paris to make hotel and theme park reservations, as well as to request information. The company outsourced the management of its telecom network to France Telecom (www.francetelecomna.com), which now manages all incoming voice traffic for the call center.

Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft
Select Sweden
Sweden's niche in European call centers is for those firms that want to target the Scandinavian and northern European market, as opposed to covering all of Europe with a single, pan-European facility.

"Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and American Express have located call centers in Sweden after realizing that the pan-European model does not work for handling their Scandinavian language requirements," says Mark Smedley, Stamford, Conn.-based senior adviser for the Invest in Sweden Agency (www.isa.se). "Those three companies have undergone the evolution of first trying to consolidate everything under one roof, then deciding that it made sense to handle Scandinavian languages in a regional center."

Sweden has one of the most educated populations in the EU, and in the world, for that matter. "Today 51 percent of the Swedish population is on the Internet, and Sweden has one of the world's highest per-capita spending for online purchases," Smedley says. "Mixed in with these people and their ability to spend are language capabilities. You can find Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Polish and German speakers quite readily, plus Russian, which is used in the Baltic states. And making the jump from America to Sweden is not difficult in any way, shape or form. Seventy percent of the Swedish population speaks English fluently, and 96 percent of the working population can converse in English."

Making a Continent-Sized Customer Connection: Europe's Biggest Call Centers, January 1997-June1999

IBM Corp., Dublin, Ireland; computer customer service Mannesmann AG, Pozzuoli, Italy; telecommunications call center France Telecom, Arnhem, Netherlands; mobile phones call center Capital One, Nottingham, United Kingdom; European credit-card call center Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Co., Cumbernauld, United Kingdom; credit-card customer service NTL, Belfast, United Kingdom; telecommunications equipment call center Dell Computer Corp., Wicklow Bray, Ireland; software technology customer support QVC, Knowsley, United Kingdom; television shopping channel call center US West/Cable and Wireless plc, Dearne Valley, United Kingdom; mobile telephones call center Fortis Bank, Doel, Belgium; banking customer service Compaq Computer Corp., Dun Laoghaire, Ireland; computer customer service Staples, Eupen, Belgium; retail customer service Hormann Electronics Ltd., Mahon, Ireland; European teleservices center Sitel Corp., Dublin, Ireland; outsourced customer service Land's End, Oakham, United Kingdom; retail mail-order customer service TeleTech Holdings, Glasgow, United Kingdom; outsourced customer service Daimler-Benz AG, Maastricht, Netherlands; auto customer service Staples, Liege, Belgium; retail customer service 3COM Corp., Blanchardstown, Ireland; information technology customer service Sykes Enterprises, Varmland, Sweden; information technology customer service Westdeutsche Landesbank, Falkirk, United Kingdom; travel customer service Charles Schwab and Co., Milton Keynes, United Kingdom; financial services customer service US West/Cable and Wireless plc, Sunderland, United Kingdom; mobile telephones call center General Electric Co., Eisenstadt, Austria; financial services call center Bank of Scotland, Tours, France; banking customer services Source: Ernst & Young's European Investment Monitor, London. For more information, call Mark Hughes at 44 171 951 0016 or e-mail at mhughes2@cc.ernsty.co.uk.