The Philippines Call Center Experience

As more and more businesses in the US try outsourcing to the Philippines they’re blown away by the value experience. Not only to they get a cost factor immediately 3-60% of the equivalent services sourced in the US, but they also get highly trained, polite, well-spoken agents whose performance is equal to, if not better, than that done by US call centers.

Most US business people have heard of call centers and generally, they’re aware that the call center industry is centered in the Philippines and India. Beyond that…they generally have very little idea how high-tech the operations are within the average Philippines call center.

The larger call centers are all located in the larger cities of the Philippines. Manila, where the industry got its start about 10 years ago, has the largest concentration of call centers. The original call centers had to locate where the best existing communication connections were and that was what’s known as the Makati area.

Makati could be compared to the Wall Street area of New York City (although it’s not as similarly heavy in financial services like Wall Street). Makati is where the first big expansion went when Manila started to grow back in the late 70’s. Today, it’s where the majority of the big hotels, premium brand tourist shopping……and major call center services companies are located.

As the Philippine contact center industry began to grow and more companies wanted to relocate, or startup, in the Philippines Makati was the logical first choice but the government encouraged growth in other areas of the city too.

Other areas where you’ll find heavy concentrations of BPOs are Ortigas, The Fort, and Eastwood. Ortigas was the first area where you began to see heavy concentrations of call center providers, followed by The Fort and Eastwood. It’s the call center business in the Philippines that has driven the extraordinary growth of the Manila and Philippines economy.

The Philippines call center industry is comprised of three strata. First, there are a few well-financed, well-run companies at the top who, for the most part, have long term contracts for large numbers of agents with major US clients. These Philippines call center companies have the best of literally everything that money can buy but their prices reflect it too. They don’t even entertain contracts medium or small sized clients.

Next, at the second tier level of the Philippines call center industry, you’ll find medium-sized companies which, for the most part, can do pretty much everything and anything the top level Philippines contact centers do. The only difference is they might not have all the latest, most expensive technology, the fanciest websites or as much foreign management. But…their rates are usually a little lower too.

This is the level that most new clients wind up because they still get a value proposition that substantially improves their bottom line.

It’s actually a very fascinating industry but not one that a potential client should shop in without being well prepared (especially first-time shoppers). If you’ve been thinking about hiring a BPO provider to help your business operation, do your homework first and proceed slowly.