Belfast Customer Service Centre celebrates year milestone with further 15 jobs

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 opened its customer service hub at Lanyon View in September 2021, creating an initial 55 roles.

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 contact.

The centre employs 53 customer service advisors, six team leaders and one customer service centre manager. Alongside these roles, all of which are new for NI, recruitment for an additional 15 customer service advisors is underway.

In total, the roles are delivering over £1.9m in annual salaries to the economy.GLL, which employs over 600 people locally, attributes this additional investment to NI’s rich talent pool and strong performance in the call centre industry.

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 centres to date and will see doors open at the redeveloped Templemore Baths next year.

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.

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 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 NI, and we are thrilled to be offering 26 more job opportunities as the centre expands. This is an exciting time for GLL in Belfast and marks a step forward in our ambitions to deliver first-class leisure services.”Martine Gibson, customer service centre manager at GLL, explained: “The establishment and delivery of our busy Customer Service Centre operation has been an exciting journey for us.

"Our advisors are required to deliver an excellent level of service to every customer and have dealt with hundreds of thousands of queries from across the UK.”Councillor Gareth Spratt, deputy chair of Belfast City Council’s City growth and regeneration committee, added: “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. I’m delighted to hear that the centre is going from strength-to-strength, with its first anniversary being marked by the creation of a further 15 jobs, adding to the 60 jobs already filled since the centre first opened.“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.”