Inbound Call Center Services In The Philippines
When considering outsourcing inbound call center services to overseas firms, the country that immediately comes to mind is India. However, India is not the only choice for American companies researching the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) market. An emerging force in the industry is the Philippines.
Overseas call centers offer the same services to their client companies (and those companies' customers) as do North American companies. Services include, answering incoming calls, processing orders with credit cards, account inquiries, literature fulfillment. If a Philippine call center is handling fulfillment, the items will of course be mailed from domestic locations in the U.S.
Salaries for call center agents in the Philippines are extremely low by American standards, paying the equivalent of a few hundred American (USD) dollars a month. However, unlike in the United States, call center jobs are highly sought after by college graduates in the Philippines because those (by American standards) meager salaries are actually much higher than the workers can earn in other industries. A competitive job market allows human resource managers at Philippine call centers to hire the most qualified candidates. This is not always a luxury afforded to hiring managers in American call centers. Interestingly, employee retention in Filipino call centers at an average of 2.5 years is between 3 and 4 times the 8 or 9 month retention level in American call centers. Employee retention is a huge factor in the level of customer service a center is capable of producing.
Call center agents in the Philippines also follow a strange schedule as compared to their peers in other industries there. That is because of the time zone difference. The Philippine time is roughly 9-12 hours ahead of U.S. time zones. Therefore, the bulk of their calls are actually taken while it is the middle of the night for them.
When trying to sell American clients on using their call centers, Philippine representatives point to a vital fact: Many Filipinos already speak Americanized English as a second language. Call center trainers conduct language classes in accent neutralization to help agents sound like everyday Americans. Some centers go as far as providing American media feeds such as current news and sports information networks, as well as major American newspapers so the agents will be able to comment intelligently on things that may come up in conversation with their customers.
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