A Promising Industry

There are many perceptions about the call center industry in the Philippines. When it was starting during the years 1997 to 2000, many people perceived it to be a meantime industry that employs only those who know how to speak English and can sit the whole day in a cubicle. Some say it’s a dead-end job as there is no career and personal growth due to the perception of a monotonous job. But as the big players came in the years 2001 to 2004, when the world’s biggest, Convergys, and Asia’s most awarded, eTelecare, opened their centers in the Philippines, thousands of opportunities opened. These companies, among others, do not only assure promising jobs but also career growth as it projects to expand in the coming years. To date, there are more than a hundred call centers in the country that offers vast career opportunities.

What is a call center?

A call center is a centralized office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone (Source: Wikipedia)

A call center can be in-house or outsourced. An in-house call center, as the name implies, is housed by the company which processes their own customer concerns, usually called their customer-service department. An in-house call center may also be a facility for telemarketing efforts. The big centers who are already here in the Philippines are HSBC, Dell, AIG and Citibank.

An outsourced call center has technically the same operations as an in-house call center. The only difference is that the outsourced call center is a separate company from the companies they are serving. A company may decide to delegate its customer service or telemarketing efforts to an outsourced call center. The outsourced call center claims to have the following benefits for the companies they are servicing:

1. It gives companies the ability to purchase intellectual property
2. They are able to focus on core competencies
3. They are able to better anticipate future costs
4. And ultimately, to lower their cost

The biggest outsourced call centers in the Philippines are Convergys, eTtelecare, Sykes Asia, People Support and IBM Daksh among others.

Types of call centers

A call center may have inbound or outbound.

1. Inbound – incoming calls for product support or information inquiries from consumers (technical or non-technical)
2. Outbound – outgoing calls for telemarketing or debt collection

Why did these big multinational companies set up their centers in the Philippines?

The Philippines has several advantages to have become one of the top destinations of foreign outsourcing investments in the Asian region. The following are the most known reasons:

Why should we become part of the industry

There are several reasons why one should be part of this growing industry. Aside from its projected growth until the year 2010, it also promises all types of careers for different types of accounts and departments needed to run a call center. The usual entry level is the agent post (other terms include: call center representative, customer service representative/specialist, call center agent, etc.)

As claimed by many, this is the only industry now that gives relatively higher compensation packages and career progression due to the increasing need for expansion.

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_center_industry_in_the_Philippines