Throughout the years, a calm revolution seems to proceed on reshaping the call center business: the rise of the Philippines in the BPO industry.
More Filipinos – about 400,000 – than Indians are now working night shifts to cater to the needs of American clients. Big companies like AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and Expedia have appointed call center in the Philippines on strategic location to handle customer service. Most of the business opportunities came from the US, Europe and India.
India, which has been the first Asian country where BPO flourished, is currently fielding 350,000 call center agents. The Philippines is able to overtake India this year and is now the number one offshore call center destination in Asia.
This shift is brought about by the obvious maturation of Philippines call center as well as the preference of BPO investors to hire call center representatives who can speak light accented American English.
Before, the main consideration of BPOs is just to lower cost, that’s why they have brought their businesses to India. But the same BPO management said that they are now more strategic. They are now scouting call center location not based on cost-efficiency factors alone but also based on its capacity to handle more specialized tasks.
Also, BPOs are now more concerned with the language skills of representatives as they have heard several American clients complaining about not able to understand the agent they were talking to. Indian agents speak British-style English and utilize unfamiliar idioms. Indians, for example, might say, “I will revert on the same,” rather than, “I will follow up on that.”
“Certain key phrases people use and idioms are significant,” said an executive at a major American business that handles service calls through the Philippines.
The Philippines call center is fast growing. At 25 to 30 % improvement, the growth has overtaken that of India which is still at 10 to 15 %.
Aside from English language competency, the Philippines also offer far more effective utility infrastructures – this means that BPO companies can save more on generators and diesel fuel.
Moreover, Philippine cities are less dangerous and have better public transportation, so employers do not have to bus their call center agents to and from the workplace as they do in India.
Last year, profits from outsourcing totaled $9 billion, or 4.5 percent of the Philippine gross domestic product, up from almost nothing in 2000. The government sees the Philippines call center industry as a goldmine so they are showing support by giving them tax subsidies and breaks.
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BPO investors expect to see the Philippines call center to carry on growing at a rapid rate and then start catering higher-value services like accounting or the processing of insurance plan claims. But, like India, BPOs are faced with cost issues primarily because the cost of living is getting too expensive. In the last 24 months, the Philippine peso has risen almost 10 percent towards the dollar, to 42.14, before weakening recently.
If the peso increases to 35 to the dollar, several call centers in the Philippines will not be able pull through.