2Touch, based at Doxford International Business Park, already employs 700 people and the expansion is being put down to new business.

Many call centres face competition from abroad where the labour is cheaper but managing director, Stuart Gray, is confident they will succeed.

He said: "We have to be conscious of the threat from businesses from abroad but we specialise in high-performance, high-level customer service where detail is important.

"We do lots of work with customer service advisors on training and we have an affinity with the products we are trying to either to sell or make customers understand better.

"That is the key to our success here."