The Philippines, the New Call Center Mecca | Sales Rain BPO
The Philippines has quickly become the new call center mecca. According to data collected by the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) revenues rose to $13 Billion in 2012 from $11 Billion in 2011 and citing that the country is employing some 780,000 call center agents, from 640,000 in 2011. As of 2011, the Philippines outpaced India and has become the number one provider of outsourcing for voice processes.
Another attraction of the Philippines is that the majority of the metropolitan areas of the Philippines have been developed greatly and far surpass India with better roads, infrastructure and power, water and sewage facilities. Foreign companies notice these great differences in standards and are more willing to bring their business to the Philippines than to India. More buildings are equipped with state of the art back-up systems for power and communications, fire and earthquake standards are better and overall aesthetics are greatly improved. Areas in or around the buildings that house all the top call centers, rival even the cleanest of US Cities and are well maintained. There are ATMs, Starbucks Coffee Shops and American fast food restaurants and 7-11 convenience stores practically on every corner. Companies and most importantly the labor force it needs, eagerly seek to work in these areas due to the pleasant surroundings, safety and access to all the modern conveniences.
This enormous shift to the Philippines may also be influenced by its proximity to customers. The Philippines is closer to travel to from the US and Canada. It also helps that the country, which having been educated by American standards can relate more to customers. Customers find it easier to do business. The shift has been such that even Indian call centers have followed their clients to the Philippines and also established Indian owned call centers in the country. Keeping up with customer demand, and due to the fact that India still counts with far more experienced call center management, apart from the Indian upstarts, many Filipino centers have looked to India for its management and hired Indian talent to operate its call centers.
Overall, being regarded as a call center mecca, the outlook for the Philippines is good. The already neutral accent is getting better as experienced agents get used to speaking with customers. Call centers are investing in their staff providing further accent training and developing conversation skills. Talented representatives that are trained well can almost eliminate most of their accent and even appear American to customers. BPO operators are also investing in more training in the Medical, Legal and Financial industries. With a more refined accent and specialized training, the Philippines may well soon begin to gain more market share in these sectors, dipping into those business processes that are still largely dominated by Indian BPO’s. With that, the Philippines could have yet another boom in new business, as companies begin seeing the value in bringing other processes currently entrusted to Indian centers to the Philippines.
Sales Rain is an integrated service provider of call center services, seat leasing, outsourcing, virtual assistant, hosted PBX, and cloud contact center solutions. Sales Rain is a US incorporated company with its branch offices registered in Philippines
You can find them on-line at www.salesrain.com.