FROM the window of her 12th floor office suite, Chey Garland looks out over the ranks of terraced houses tucked behind Middlesbrough's Albert Road where her business started more than 20 years ago.

It is only a matter of yards away from the front door of the gleaming Centre North-East, Middlesbrough's tallest office block, but it might as well be a million miles.

"That's where I had my first business," she says, pointing across town, "I raised enough money to develop that plot of land there and then." She switches again: "I opened my first call centre down there in Corporation Road."

The Chey Garland success story has been remarkable. Born in North Ormesby, she left Middlesbrough High School and started out as a tea girl, then office junior in a busy credit department, but very quickly spotted a gap in the market. In 1980, at the tender age of 23, she opened her first business, a commercial debt recovery agency.

"I just found that I had a flair for it and it was something I really wanted to do," she said.

After three years, the business had generated enough money for Chey to move into property development with a plot of town centre land, and by 1993 CJ Garland & Co, which employed 60 staff, had moved into the customer care business.

Vodafone was so impressed by the quality of the work that the company was invited to become its permanent outsource call-handling provider and in 1997 the firm opened its first call centre in Corporation Road, with 20 staff on a 12-week contract.

Since then, household names such as Freeserve, Powergen, Virgin, Cable and Wireless and Egg have signed up.

In 1999, CJ Garland opened the first of its two call centres at Hartlepool Marina, and the company now employs a total of 1,800 staff at its three centres on Teesside - a figure expected to rise by another 300 by the end of the year.

THE views from Chey Garland's office are impressive. On a clear day, you can see Roseberry Topping and the North York Moors beyond and, thanks in part to businesses like Garlands, Middlesbrough gets more clear days than it used to as it sheds its smog-bound image.

It would be understandable if the rarified atmosphere of the 12th floor went to her head but, as she towers over the town centre, Chey's feet remain on the ground.

"I am a very realistic person," she says. "I know what goes up can come down, so I don't get carried away with the successes."

It would be easy to get carried away. Accolade has followed accolade: British Steel's woman of achievement in 1999; executive of the year in the Tees Valley Business awards 2000 and finalist in the lifetime achievement awards the following year; shorlisted for the Veuve Cliquot Businesswoman of the Year award last year and regional finalist in the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards the same year.

But the accolade which is closest to her heart was the recent Sunday Times survey which named CJ Garland as Britain's 21st fastest growing company.

Last year, the firm had a turnover of £12m. In the results to be announced this month, it is expected to have reached £16m and the forecast is for turnover of £23m by the next financial year.

"I couldn't say that I had planned all this back in 1997, but I did know that there was a huge potential for the business to grow," she said.

IN January, CJ Garland won the lucrative deal with Freeserve. Only 39 days later, with the ink barely dry on the contract, the company was taking its first calls after equipping the centre floors, recruiting and training staff, not only in the skills of customer care, but also in the highly technical detail required by Freeserve.

CJ Garland takes staff training and development seriously - it is staff, says Chey, that make the difference.

"The technology we have at our disposal is clearly very sophisticated, but the people are the difference.

"When a customer rings up, they are going to be quite oblivious to what technological equipment we have, it is the soft skills that matter - we want customers to say to their friends 'the girl at Virgin was very helpful' and endorse the product in that way."

The company prides itself on taking care of its employees. The centres operate their own in-house radio station, Radio GaGa, which broadcasts 12 hours a day and have chill out areas, known as Caf Del Mar, where staff can relax over a game of table football or watch plasma screen TV from the comfort of leather couches.

It also offers the unique Touch training programme which offers staff the chance to work in schools, with the community - particularly on drug awareness programmes - or in the radio station for anything up to a year in salaried time.

Chey is keen to stress that the programme, humanitarian as it undoubtedly sounds, is part of a hard-headed business strategy - a strategy which in at least one case produced a 24 per cent increase in business from an invigorated sales team.

She says: "It is not an altruistic programme, we are not doing it because we are a goody-two-shoes company.

"It is about developing people - they come back more tolerant, more empathetic, more confident and better at collaborating in teams, and that is something you can't teach in a classroom."

Despite the well-reported problems in the industry and the ever increasing competition from places such as India and South Africa, Chey remains confident about the future of the UK's call centre industry - in the short-term at least.

"It is a global market in which we operate, and some of the simpler work will go offshore, but more complicated value-added work is still best done here.

"Our focus is more about keeping the company involved in more intricate work and don't forget, the industry is still set to grow by a further ten per cent this year."

It is likely that Chey Garland will be at the forefront of that growth for some years to come.