Ring of Life

“Thank you for calling Verizon High Speed Technical Support, My name is Shane, how may I help you today?”

Above is a spiel I learned from a friend working in a call center. Nowadays, being a call center agent is one of the most in demand jobs for Filipinos. Answering calls seem to be the bread and butter of most of our countrymen. Why not? One just have to pass exams and interviews and with learning the particular accent that an agent’s account needs, one is then ready to converse and provide help to different people around the globe.

Great pay awaits for an aspiring call center agent. And, as I’ve read from an article in the net, more call centers shall be based here in the country. Australia-based company Call Design sees opportunities in the local contact center industry amid the US financial crisis.

According to Call Design managing director Miles Stanton, organizations such as banks in the United States and Europe are still outsourcing business processes in countries that provide lower cost yet high quality services.
In the US, the average trust of a call center agent is around 150,000 dollars. In the Philippines, I understand that it’s around 25,000 dollars. The banks abroad will have no choice but to outsource non-call center functions to another lower cost, high quality countries. There are only three that they can choose from, India China and the Philippines.
Among the three countries, the Philippines has the most potential because Filipinos can speak English well. Call Design director Brett Redman said the Philippines is one of the countries that have been identified globally for outsourcing call center services, which is also the reason why the company chose to invest in the country starting with an office in Makati City.
Redman pointed out that clients get upset when they learn through agents’ accent in some countries that calls are being made offshore. But they barely notice it in the case of Filipino agents. Stanton said organizations need to focus more on developing agents rather than just investing in technology.
“By focusing on the human being, we can make that human being so much more effective, so much more able to provide quality solutions and a quality account of the call that it makes the technology work for them,” Stanton added.
With these, I was reminded of the last question of a speech we recited for our Oral Communication’s class, “What could we become in the future?” Finally I got the answer; Philippines will soon be the call center capital of the world!