Multilingual Sykes can talk its way to the top

But the voice on the other end of the line spoke perfect Finnish, giving no clues that she was actually more than 1000 miles away in Scotland.

Meanwhile, in the same call centre handling Mr Bryggman's query, her colleagues were chatting away in a multitude of languages, dealing with queries about everything from digital cameras to baby products.

While cheap labour and a well-educated workforce in India has tempted many British companies to outsource customer support, Sykes Global Services is reversing this trend at its Calder House centre - and is reaping the benefits.

The multi-national company chose Edinburgh for its north European base because of the wealth of foreigners in the city, despite the higher labour costs.

Between them, the 650 employees speak 17 languages, handling customer support for 21 countries throughout Europe, including Russia and Spain and also Turkey.

All workers speak at least two languages fluently and about 65 per cent of their business is in languages other than English.

Les Torrance, director of Sykes in Edinburgh, says its unique spread of multilingualism gives the company a major advantage when it comes to bidding for lucrative multinational contracts. Its best-known clients include brand names such as Motorola, Proctor & Gamble and Kodak.

Sykes Global Services reported record third-quarter earnings last year, with revenue contribution from the Scottish division up nine per cent.

Its Scottish teams recently picked up three performance awards at the Teleperformance CRM Grand Prix in Sweden. These included an award for hi-tech support for the Motorola team, and a consumer goods award for the Proctor & Gamble team.

Despite being a large employer in the Capital, Sykes has a fairly low profile, as most of its work is carried out under its clients' names. Its Scottish centre is one of 40 globally, which employ more than 18,000 people in all.

"We are not well-known as a brand because we focus on our clients' brand, for obvious reasons," Mr Torrance says.

"If you work with Motorola, then you're dedicated to them. A lot of people have a lot of loyalty to the brand.

"We are fairly unique in that we can take customers' experience end to end, for example in the case of a digital camera, we can answer questions about functionality, process sales, and provide technical support."

Over 80 per cent of their Edinburgh employees are foreign-born, many of whom came here to study and stayed on. Of the rest, most have at least one non-British parent, or lived abroad while they were growing up.

Mr Torrance says: "It's a very cosmopolitan working environment. We're one of the few truly pan-European centres, with nearly 20 languages spoken here.

"That's one reason why Edinburgh is a good base - it's a highly multicultural area, thanks to its own diverse nature and the fact there are several local universities. As a source of skills it's ideal.

"We generally recruit native speakers who already have English as a second language, but we do have some Scottish people whose parents have been in the Army and they grew up in Germany, or who are, perhaps, half-Italian."

He says a higher wage offer than at a single-language call centre means the company has no problems recruiting staff, and Sykes runs a reward scheme for workers who recruit friends to the firm.

Concentrating mainly on the European market, Mr Torrance says the Edinburgh base has seen a large increase in the number of its Polish workers over the last few years.

"Most of them speak excellent English, so a lot of the work they do is actually in English," he said. "They also have a very strong work ethic."

He is optimistic about the future, and predicts the firm's Edinburgh operations will grow to around 800 staff.

"We have several new business opportunities in the first couple of months of this year, and it's all looking very positive at the moment," he says.

Job speaks Diana's language

SWEDISH employee Diana Elmegaard says she likes to learn other languages from her international colleagues at Sykes.

Sitting next to a Greek man, and socialising with colleagues from Brazil and Australia, the English graduate from Lund likes nothing better than to add extra languages to her fluent English, Norwegian, Danish, and her native Swedish.

Speaking some German and Italian too, she is not an untypical employee in terms of the extent of her language skills. Ms Elmegaard, who lives in Gorgie, has been working with Motorola's Scandinavian team, which picked up a performance award in the Swedish Teleperformance CRM Grand Prix, for a year. She says: "I first came here when I was 13, on a tour with my parents. I knew I liked it as soon as I set foot in Waverley Station. Then I came to Edinburgh University to study English.

"After graduating, I worked on technical things for the film industry before I got this job. One of the things that was really appealing was the international atmosphere.

"There are about 25 to 30 other nationalities - it's amazing.

There's a very large variety of people here, from every age group. If you listen to languages every day then you're always picking up new words."