UP TO 300 jobs are set to be created in Southampton in a state-of-the-art call centre, the Daily Echo can reveal.

Rapidly expanding city-based firm Interactive Telephone Services has confirmed it is already looking to move from its present home in central Southampton to a new site on the edge of the city to cope with demand for its services.

The news comes as the call-handling firm pledged to expand even before the move by taking on around 100 more workers early next year

The Grosvenor Square firm, which already employs 50 people in its automated call-handling centre, announced the vanguard of the new posts during the official opening of the first phase of its new live call handling centre yesterday.

Up until now ITS's core business sprang from the 780 automatic phone lines that come into its offices just off Bedford Place.

The bulk of the jobs were for transcribers transferring data from the automatic lines onto computer databases. Clients have included multinational firms and also charity disaster appeals such as the Kosovo appeal.

The first phase of the expansion will see the firm branch out for the first time into live call handling for clients such as Cornhill insurance, Orange telecommunications and the Capital Radio Group.

Call handlers will use leading technology to answer queries from the customers of multi-national companies who have seen products on Internet sites.

Chief executive Anthony Tate said: "In the past two years the company has seen a massive 150 per cent growth in turnover and, with the advent of this new service, we forecast further growth in 2000 with a predicted 300 positions for live call handling agents on a new site. We are now very well placed to play a large role in servicing the growth sector of commerce over the Internet, or e-commerce as it's called in the next millennium."

He said he could not be specific about plans for the new site which is to follow the present expansion.

"We are looking at sites at the moment and they are either in Southampton or the Southampton area. We have options on the edge of the city and also towards Fareham direction, but I cannot comment any more than that at this stage."

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