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The story on the front page of Friday's paper about the decision of Parago Communications to set up its own call centre here is one more indicator of our region's quiet strengths.

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Daniel Martins photo

Parago call centre operations director Tom Vagt was in town to visit the company's new call centre operation in the Rogers building. Parago, formerly the only client of Help Desk Now, used to outsource that function, but now carried it out directly.

The company had originally outsourced its call centre work to Help Desk Now's Miramichi operation, and then Fusion BPO when HDN pulled up stakes and moved out. When Fusion BPO decided to do the same thing, rather than go with Fusion to Ontario, Parago decided to hire all the customer service representatives taking calls here on its behalf and create its own centre here.

The reason: the quality of Miramichi's workers.

"Our company ... decided to take over all the employees," said Tom Vagt, Parago's director of call-centre operations. "All employees except for one made the move."

That's 41 employees in total who recently started taking calls at the former Rogers building.

Vagt said Parago is having such success with its Miramichi employees that the company felt they would be difficult to replace.

"The reps, the agents are extremely dedicated," he said. "Their work ethic is very high compared to our other facilities we co-manage. That was kind of the driving force behind it."

Now that Parago has terminated its relationship with Fusion BPO, Vagt said, the company plans to hire 12-20 more employees.

"We want to keep this facility operating at a certain utilization and efficiency," he said. "It just gives us more flexibility to scale as we want."

Directly or indirectly, Parago has over 500 call-centre employees worldwide, most of them outsourced, so it's reasonable to assume the company knows what it's talking about.

As call centres go, the Parago operation is a fairly modest one, but that's not the point here. What's key is the reason why the company insisted on retaining its Miramichi employees — and what that bodes for our future.

Put simply, Parago recognized quality when it saw it and took whatever steps were necessary to capitalize on that.

That sets a wonderful example for other companies considering Miramichi as a possible place to set up shop.

Just Wednesday, representatives from the Enterprise Network's 15 regional offices around the province convened at a hotel here to meet with officials from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Business New Brunswick and the Department of Energy to discuss how business can get involved in large-scale energy projects proposed and already underway.

"What we're working on as a collective group of agencies is supply-chain development," said Enterprise Miramichi Executive Director Brian Donovan. "How can we help plug in the second- and third-tier companies that provide services or products into Saint John through the primary suppliers."

Added Theo Losier, a business agent for the province's department of energy, "This opened up another view of the whole energy hub, that it's not only for Saint John."

And then Friday came the news the province has earmarked for Miramichi $130,000 in funding from the Community Development Trust for Enterprise Miramichi so the economic development body can top up its small- and medium-sized business diversification fund.

Donovan said the $130,000 has yet to be confirmed by government officials, but it will certainly be welcome when it comes through.

When he announced this particular trust, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the money will, among other things, help increase job training and boost economic development in cities where it's needed most.

With companies like Parago Communications setting the example, and city council, Enterprise Miramichi and other agencies working behind the scenes to capitalize on that example, we have good reason for increasing optimism regarding the future.