PT will generate 1,200 new jobs by creating a Customer Relationship and Technical Support Centre in Santo Tirso. This initiative is the result of a partnership between PT, Santo Tirso municipality and Ministry of Labour, aiming to build a new and modern Centre. The first step took place during the signature of a protocol between PT and the local council on 18 August at the Santo Tirso Town Hall.

The Customer Relationship Centre will be built on a plot of land provided by the local council, with an area of 3,700 sq metre, and will be equipped with last-generation CRM (Customer Relationship Management) technology. It will be a completely new building, with 600 attendance positions, allowing PT the use of an especially designed space, in accordance with its needs and demands. This new Centre, equipped with e-learning technology and with rooms for continuous technical training for 100 people, will provide customer care and technical support for Sapo ADSL Broadband and TMN Mobile Broadband Internet customers, for Meo TV as well as business customers.

According to PT’s CEO, this will be an investment of paramount important. “In fact, today is an important moment for Portugal Telecom. We will assume a long-duration commitment with Santo Tirso. PT is a company whose main objective is to grow. To grow in Portugal and worldwide.” It should be remembered that PT invested 350 million Euro in the first half of 2008, a 20 percent increase compared to last year.

For Castro Fernandes, mayor of Santo Tirso, “this is a major investment. Santo Tirso will not stand still. We have here a few industrial units, which are among the best in the world”. He says that this investment from PT is a solid, sustainable and future-oriented project. An added-value for the population of the municipality.

José Sócrates, present at the protocol signature ceremony, said that “such a large investment as well as the commitment of creating 1,200 new jobs is something that is not announced every day”. The Prime-Minister praised Portugal Telecom’s investment as well as the development of new opportunities for citizens. “PT is doing a great investment work in this country. It is a leading company among Portuguese business organisations and, therefore, I want to express my confidence that PT will be up to the demands of the market worldwide. It means innovating, investing and changing all the time.” 

PT will issue a tender request for the selection of the outsourcing companies that will work in this new Centre and for such purpose, has also established an agreement with IEFP (Employment and Professional Training Institute) to define the recruitment methodology, privileging companies that hire people under long-duration contracts.

The new Centre will foreseeable start operating within 44 weeks after the signature, as the construction of the building will start immediately. The selection and training of future employees will start shortly.

The option for Santo Tirso

A multi-disciplinary team made up of professionals from several areas and business units has analysed PT’s needs for the next eight years in terms of customer relationship strategy development. After a profound and pondered analysis, it was decided to consolidate strategic investment outside big cities, namely Lisbon and Porto. This was the reason for opting to build this new Centre in Santo Tirso and another one in Coimbra as well, which will replace and consolidate an existing operation (with 800 professionals). The latter one will have a dimension similar to Santo Tirso’s Call Centre, with 1,200 work positions.

“By creating this Centre in Santo Tirso, we take another important step towrds our strategy. And why do we want to decentralise? It has a lot to do with the availability of qualified human resources in areas such as, for example, Santo Tirso, with a young population and some unemployment, which we obviously can try to help fight. But above all, because we notice that in areas outside Lisbon and Porto, job loyalty in this domain is quite high, people’s rotation is lower and the profitability of the investment that we have made on training is quite above the average”. 

Zeinal Bava, Rui Pedro Soares, Nuno Cetra and Abílio Martins

This investment “is the result of a profound work of optimisation of all means and resources that we can provide to our customers. That is, we have at this moment a strong concentration of call centres in Lisbon and we believe that by delocalising to centres with enough dimension to receive the customer care, technical support, helpdesk and sales functions we will be better prepared to increase our success rate at the first customer contact, thus reducing and optimising operations to reduce costs. It is a bet on the future and on the quality improvement of our customer care”, explained Nuno Cetra, PT Contact, Director.

 “PT Imobiliária has followed all the analysis and selection work of the locations where Customer Relationship Centres could be installed and it was our doing, the negotiation of incentives with the municipalities, namely the plot of land to build this centre. The Santo Tirso municipality has provided the land, where the Centre will be installed, by means of a protocol”, explained Rui Pedro Soares, PT Imobiliária, chairman.

The initial investment in this project will amount to five million Euro, but Zeinal Bava has restated that “our commitment is to keep investing much more, both in Portugal and in our international operations”.

“PT has today more than 60 million customers worldwide. It is a scale that we believe to be fundamental for our competitiveness and for our affirmation as a big Portuguese-run business project and above all, creating jobs, both in Portugal for Portuguese and creating an opportunity for Portuguese outside Portugal”, continued PT’s CEO.