The social enterprise behind Belfast’s Better leisure centres has created over 70 jobs in the city through the establishment of a UK wide Customer Service Centre in Belfast.
GLL, which operates 16 leisure centres in Belfast and over 250 centres and gyms across the UK, opened its state-of-the-art customer service hub at Lanyon View in Belfast in September 2021, creating an initial 55 roles for the city.
Now one year after completion, the Better UK Customer Service Centre has handled over 400,000 (417,996) customer queries, over 93% of which were solved at the time of initial customer contact.
The centre currently employs 53 Customer Service Advisors, six Team Leaders and one Customer Service Centre Manager. Alongside these roles, all of which are new for Northern Ireland, recruitment for an additional 15 Customer Service Advisors is underway.
In total, the roles are delivering over £1.9 million in annual salaries to the economy.
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GLL, which employs over 600 people locally, attributes this additional investment in Belfast to Northern Ireland’s rich talent pool and strong performance in the call centre industry.
Gareth Kirk, Regional Director at GLL, said: “It is fantastic to be celebrating one-year of our Customer Service Centre with such good news for Belfast. We know that our leisure centres and services can only be as good as the people we employ, and we are immensely proud of what the new Customer Service Centre team has achieved in their first year. This success is testament to the skilled workforce we have in Northern Ireland, and we are thrilled to be offering 26 more job opportunities as the centre expands.”
The new venture complements the ongoing Leisure Transformation Programme in Belfast, a £105 million investment by Belfast City Council to get more people, more active, more often. This programme has delivered five new state-of-the-art centres to date and will see doors open at the redeveloped Templemore Baths next year.
A social enterprise that reinvests all profits in the communities it operates, GLL has delivered over 17 Leisure Employment Academies in partnership with Belfast City Council since its establishment here in 2015, giving 200 individuals in the city access to fully funded training programmes and job opportunities in the leisure sector.
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At the Customer Service Centre, the growing team has collectively talked on the phone with customers for over 19,000 hours and resolved over 65,000 email enquiries.
Councillor Gareth Spratt, Deputy Chair of Belfast City Council’s City Growth and Regeneration Committee, said: “Belfast is a talented, competitive and connected city, so the original decision by GLL to base its UK customer service centre here reflects our growing reputation as an attractive place to locate. Creating jobs and growing the economy are two of the main priorities within the Belfast Agenda, the city’s community plan and key strategic document, so this investment will contribute to our wider ambitions for the city. I would like to congratulate the GLL team on their achievements to-date and wish them every success in the future.”
Source: Written from press release.
