Call Center Philippines

When somebody mentions ‘call center Philippines’ it doesn’t bring much of a visual to mind for most people. Fact is though, that the call center business in the Philippines is almost entirely in Manila, the nation’s capital.

Manila itself is a city that most people don’t know much about. And they don’t realize that it’s actually is one of the world’s largest cities. So large, in fact, that it’s divided up into sub-cities…much like New York City. One subsection in particular, Makati, is home to the majority of call centers in the city.

Pick almost any block in Makati, in the Philippines, and you’ll find a substantial number of the buildings hour a call center. It’s actually a mark of pedigree for a call center in the Philippines to be located in Makati. While smaller call centers do exist, the average call center in Makati, Philippines is rather large. Some of them employ well over 500 agents simultaneously in just one location.

To have one of these jobs working in a call center in Manila, Philippines, in a nice building downtown, with nice restaurants all around, nice shops, air conditioning, among other educated people, in a company with good benefits is one of the best jobs a young college graduate in the Philippines can have.

Makati however isn’t the only part of Manila where you’ll find a call center in the Philippines. Other areas of Manila where call centers have sprouted up include Ortigas, Eastwood and The Fort. The Philippines government has gone to special lengths to incentivize call center industry development in these other areas of Manila.

Some of these areas were already populous but others, like Eastwood for example, as little at 10 years ago were barely populated at all. Today you look around and see upper middle class shopping areas, stores, cafes, restaurants, electronics stores in every direction. The commercial areas are themselves surrounded by tall, modern office buildings and apartment buildings that cater primarily to the many call centers of the Philippines that have operations in the area.

In Eastwood in particular, the local economy in these areas tends to run 24/7 because working hours of the call center in the Philippines tends to follow daylight hours in their client countries of the development, English speaking world.

All of this makes a call center in the Philippines a remarkable place to work and a remarkable institution…all in mighty Manila, Philippines…the place that most people know very little about.

More and more now, having a call center in the Philippines is the answer to US companies looking to maintain profitability by lowering expenses and increasing sales. Establishing a call center in the Philippines is, perhaps more so than any other single decision a business owner could make, the easiest way to save a lot of money immediately and also increase sales efficiency.

Phone selling has been around for a long time. So as telephone based customer services. Outsourcing either or both of these tasks to hard-working call center agents in the Philippines generally is an immediate savings of 30-60% compared to similar functions sourced stateside. Outsourcing outbound customer service, telemarketing, data verification or anything else that’s normally done over the phone can be easily done by Filipino call center agents.

Most US companies have already pulled just about every rabbit out of the hat that they could. They tried all the traditional approaches to lowering expenses and increasing profitability. They’ve tried different kinds of advertising. Many of them have tried ‘the internet’. They tried expanding their product line. They’ve tried specializing in their product line. They’ve tried working longer hours. You name it…they’ve tried it.

Most of them have heard about the concept of outsourcing too….e.g. having a call center in the Philippines. In most cases the reason they haven’t done anything about the idea is because they just didn’t understand how really easy it is and the many advantages they would gain by doing so.

If you’re looking for a call center in the Philippines it’s pretty easy to find several listed on the internet. A few of them actually are pretty good too but the problem the business owner typically experiences when shopping for a call center in the Philippines via the internet is that he/she has no way of verifying the validity of the information they see on the web page.

The other problem that many small to medium sized US businesses experience when shopping for a call center in the Philippines is that they aren’t large enough to get the attention of the larger, well established, well run call centers in the Philippines. Those call centers typically cater to very large clients who contract for 200 seats or more and pay top dollar. Small the medium sized companies don’t have such budgets and their requirements (initially at least) are much smaller.

There is a second tier of call centers in the Philippines who, although they can do a good job, simply don’t have the web visibility and/or competent marketing support to ‘sell’ to US clients. The Filipino way of doing business isn’t quiet as aggressive as the US way and often US potential clients get the impression that Filipino management is too passive.

That’s another reason why it’s a very smart idea for US clients to invest the time and money to come over to the Philippines (i.e. Manila) to actually meet some potential call center managers and key figures before making a decision. The relationship between the call center and the US client need to be very open and responsive.

Those are a couple of tips for anyone considering contracting with a call center in the Philippines. There’s more…..but that’s a start.

The call center Philippines story is a remarkable one. Here’s a country that, if it had any claim to fame at all prior to the early 1990’s, it was simply as a great place for US military to retire in because the living costs were relatively low and the girls were pretty and plentiful. That’s all changed.

The call center Philippines phenomenon has catapulted the Philippines into world-wide notoriety and regard as the number one best source for top quality, high value proposition, call center services. In 2010 the Philippines captured that number one ranking from India. The call center business in the Philippines has literally transformed the economy and re-directed the future of the country.

The call center business came to the Philippines purely as an adjunct to the already well established call centers operating from India. Management felt that some of their business processes would take advantage of the labor cost in the Philippines (i.e. which was even lower than in India). What they discovered exceeded their wildest imagination.

It turned out that the timing was just right for bringing the call center business model to the Philippines. At that time the handwriting was on the wall…..everyone knew that the US military was ‘on the way out’. So…what to do with the well trained labor that had been working within the US military related economic umbrella?

Strategic decision makers also realized that the Philippines had, in comparison to India, a much better communications infrastructure which could quickly and easily be adapted to call center operations from the Philippines.

There was another unexpected advantage of setting up a call center industry in the Philippines. That advantage was that the average Filipino turned out to be very well ‘tuned in’ to doing business, over the phone, with Americans. This was because English was (and still is) taught as a second language in all the public schools PLUS Filipino pop culture is very much tuned in what’s happening in the US.

This meant that call center agents in the Philippines found it very easy to talk about American services and products. They were already very familiar with them. This made outbound telemarketing from a call center in the Philippines very effective.

So, since the early 1990’s when the call center industry first got started in the Philippines, it’s grown rapidly and almost exponentially to become a huge source of jobs, capital and national pride. It’s brought thousands of Filipinos into closer contact with Western culture (and specifically US culture) and also millions of dollars into the Philippine economy. All….good stuff.

Call centers have been around a long time in the US but they’ve usually had a somewhat sleezy image.  They were perceived as the people who invariably called you right in the middle of dinner or your favorite TV show and wanted to sell you something you had no interest in.

In reality, most phone rooms did a lot of good too.  And…the telemarketing business has matured a lot not only in the US but especially in countries like India and the Philippines where 99% of the large, international call centers are.  Today, to walk through the average large Call Center Philippines, you’d think you were in the most advanced New York call center.

Today you’d see huge rooms full of busy call center agents, high tech communications equipment (i.e. computers, touch screens, head sets, etc.) and highly active managers and quality assurance personnel making sure that everything is done totally in accordance with local laws and call center industry best-practices.  This is the reality of a call center Philippines today.

The Philippines was a relative late-comer to the call center industry…getting started several years after the industry was originally established (i.e. the ‘outsourced offshore’ aspect of it).  At first it was only used for less sensitive, non verbal-intensive processes.  It was quickly apparent however that, in addition to their labor cost that was 30-50% lower than their Indian counterparts, call center Philippines agents did a superior job.

Looking on the Google results for Call Center Philippines you’ll find a variety of companies.  Some are Philippines based and some are US based.  In some cases the websites quote prices but in most cases they don’t.

Most people searching for Call Center Philippines are looking for information about prices but price can be a dead-end distraction because most first-time outsourced offshore call center clients don’t really know what information to look at in order to properly ‘due-diligence’ their decision.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that most Philippines based call centers do not have US account representative staff assigned to follow up on prospective client inquiries.  That means that it’s not unusual to get a belated and more-or-less ‘canned’ email response, from somebody who obviously doesn’t speak very good English, rather than a phone call from a real person.

Most US call center companies are very good a customer relations but they can’t offer the cost savings that Philippines based call centers can.

The word is getting around that you’ll have your best chance for superior results from a call center Philippines.  If you can find a call center Philippines that’s got some US management and training, you’ve got a winning combination that will lower your cost of sales and give you more sales.

With the recent explosive growth of the call center industry in the Philippines, a lot of business leaders are coming to the Philippines to see these new high-tech telecommunication centers that are becoming so vital to their stateside profitability.  One of the questions call center managers in the Philippines constantly entertain is, “Why are all the big name call centers in the Philippines located in Manila?”

The short answer is, “That’s the way it evolved.” But the details are more interesting.  The reason all the biggest and best call centers in the Philippines chose to base in Manila (the country’s capital) is because they can do the best job for their US clients by taking advantage of all the resources that exist in the Manila area.

The call center industry actually started in India during the 1980’s.  Later, when some call center operators considered branching out by moving part of their operations to the Philippines, they did so primarily because they knew the cost of labor was lower.  But there were other reasons they chose Manila.

Obviously, one would expect to find the best infrastructure in a country’s capital city and that was exactly the situation that existed in Manila at the time.  Although it’s not the case currently, during the late 70’s and 80’s, the Philippines had one of the most vibrant economies in SE Asia.  Part of the reason was because us the US military presence.

The big US naval base in nearby Olongapo and Subic Bay area meant that there was already an established high-tech communications infrastructure and lots of Filipinos who were trained to operate those facilities.  Slightly north of Subic Bay was Clark Air Force Base, one of the largest US Air Force bases in the world. Much of this technology and many of these personnel later migrated into various facets of the call center industry in the Philippines and Manila area.

90% of the country’s best and most prestigious colleges, universities and trade schools also base in Manila.   Filipino culture puts a high value on education even though the country itself (before the advent of the call center industry in the Philippines) didn’t really have enough high paying opportunities to fully employ them.

In the early years of growth of the call center industry in the Philippines, it was totally no problem to find call center recruits who spoke very good English.  Most of the laid-off employees from the disappearing US military related jobs where still on the job market and were eager to go back to work.  Especially in work that helped them maintain their contact with the American culture they’d grown accustomed to.

Nowadays the call center personnel managers have to give even better benefits and working conditions to attract call center agents with good English.  These agents know their English proficiency is in high demand.  The people who run the call centers in the Philippines know that a job in a city like Manila, where there’s so much to do for fun, is going to be a lot more attractive than a call center job out ‘in the sticks’ in the provinces (even if the cost of living is much lower).

Call centers recruit over 10% of the graduating classes of most of the good Manila institutions of higher learning.  And they also even recruit from schools outside of Manila too.  A lot of those graduates are eager for a chance to move to and work in call centers in Manila.

So…Manila started with the best communications infrastructure and still has the best labor and managerial talent market.  That’s why any really top-notch call center in the Philippines does business in or near Manila.