Lee-Anne Burke believes in following her heart. After finishing the Leaving Cert, her love of the French language took her away from home to work as an au pair in Brussels. Now, her fluency in French has led her into a career in the teleservices area. She believes being Irish does help in the teleservices business. "I think that we're a lot more friendly. We ask the callers questions and people in general respond to questions; they are nicer, and they are friendly to us."
She quickly lists the qualities that are important for someone in the teleservices business - putting patience at the top, followed by an ability to communicate and listen to what the callers want.
Last week she started in a new job working in the Siemens call centre in Cork. "I really like the atmosphere. It's very technical, all about mobile phones and how you can fix them. It's interesting. I'm enjoying it." Her boss, Doug Lockhart, general manager of Siemens SG Ltd, says: "It's boom time in Cork" for those in the teleservices area. The pan-European teleservices centre, which was set up in Cork some 18 months ago, already has people of 10 nationalities working there, including a Russian and a number of Finns and Danes. Also the company is in the middle of a recruitment drive , about to take 25 more people on shortly. At the moment there are 130 working in the teleserives area and it's "growing all the time," says Lockhart. There was no great plan when Burke returned from a year in Brussels.
"I really didn't know exactly what I wanted to do," she recalls. Her father, Denis Burke, a career guidance teacher at her own second-level school, the Patrician Presentation Secondary School in Fethard, suggested she apply for one of the new courses in applied languages and information technology in international teleservices. She did and was accepted on to the two year PLC course in the College of Commerce in Cork city. Her studies included spending 17 weeks in Montpellier working in the Hotel Mercure as part of her training. Her job in France involved answering the phone, dealing with guests and generally being involved with the day-to-day running of the hotel. "I landed on my feet," she says. "It was excellent. "The course had everything, computers, French, business management," she explains. She graduated in May, and was chosen as student of the year by the college.
While she was studying, she also started working part-time in the Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide call centre in Penrose Wharf in Cork. On finishing the course she was taken on as a full-time employee. Her job included working in the company's customer services department, which is the complaints department. Callers could be "very, very angry, while others can be very pleasant", she says, but "usually people are a little bit put out, that's why they are ringing. You just have to take them as they come, really everybody is different." "You have to know about the area and the hotels. You have to sound natural and chat to them, and ask them probing questions. Then I went into customer services in July. It was a good experience. I learned a lot. I had to deal with some very irate customers and know how to pacify them. We were trained very well. I learned how to calm them down."
A job in teleservices is "challenging," says Burke. "There are new products out all the time. There are new things to learn all the time. It will be very challenging. And you feel you've done something worthwhile at the end of the day.
"You have to be patient and you have to listen, not to raise your voice. You empathise with them, tell them what you can do and not what you can't do. You don't use negative words, like `unfortunately'."
She moved to Siemens recently in order to free up her evenings so that she can begin an arts degree programme at UCC by studying at night. A plan for the future is already forming in her head: "I want to get the degree in French and hopefully teach - maybe the teleservices courses. I'd really like that."
