Call Center Philippines

Davao City Investment and Promotion Center (DCIPC) head Engineer Roberto Teo during the Davao Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Property Forum on Thursday said that the city in the next few months will make available some 20,000 sq. m. for call center operations.

Teo said some of these projects are ongoing and they expect the available the spaces to be ready toward the end of the year.

He said the developments are in Lanang for Davao Motor Sales, J P Laureal Avenue of the Robinsons Land, Inc where the building will also house its supermarket, one in downtown area and the fourth one is at the fourth floor of NCCC Mall in Matina, Davao City.

With the projection raised by Oscar Sanez, chief executive officer of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines he said the industry is really big and by 2010 they expect that some $310 billion businesses would be realized and will be outsourced in countries like India and the Philippines.

He said that of this figure they are targeting about 10 percent or $13 billion and if Davao City could get about 5 percent of the $13 billion that would need some 180,000 sq. m. of spaces for new sites.

The property forum was held purposely for real property owners and developers of Davao City to find out for themselves what BPO really is all about.

Lizabel Holganza, president of the Davao City IT Council said they noted some interests from these property owners and are hopeful that these land owners after getting a clear picture of the IT industry will consider investing in real estates to locate BPO investors that are highly concentrated in Manila.

Sanez meanwhile said that they want to break the concentration in the National Capital Region because it would not be doing good for the industry.

“We need to maintain a not so heavy operation in Manila to maintain healthy competition with each other,” he said.

Teo although said that Davao City would be ideal place for offshoring and outsourcing, it would need still a road map to determine what the city really has.

“There is a need to conduct inventory on what Davao really has,” he said.

He said this is a comprehensive study that would cost about $100 T for them to get the real picture and what are its strengths.

The preparation of the design he said is ongoing and they will endorse it to the Davao City ICT Task Force even as he said that they are looking for fund donor for the study.

He said it is up for the Task Force to act on it and if they could get an outside funding that would be good as the city government could save on cost.

Teo however said that Davao City is ideal for light and service industry.

“Personally I want investments that would fall under these sectors and find out if they would put up another PEZA accredited site ideal for IT Park,” he said.

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Outsourcer TeleTech has been awarded the Philippines’ Regional Outsourcing and Offshoring (O&O) Excellence Award for its contribution in the development of “next wave” cities.

The award was made by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) as part of the recently-concluded E-Services Global Outsourcing Conference. The Regional O&O Excellence award recognises companies that have supported the development of so-called next wave cities through direct investments and other initiatives such as HR talent development.

TeleTech currently operates ten (12) delivery centers nationwide, employing more than 15,000 workers. Outside of Metro Manila, the company has facilities in:

• Cebu

• Dumaguete

• Lipa

• Bacoor

• Cainta

• Iloilo

• Bacolod

• San Fernando (Pampanga)

• Santa Rosa (Laguna).

“Trusting that cities in the countryside can meet the skills and infrastructure requirements of the company and its clients, this award recognises the contribution of TeleTech in increasing the integrity of these cities as ICT investment locations,” said Carissa Cruz-Evangelista, DTI undersecretary and head of the Regional Operations Group.

Too many KPIs and not enough performance. Does this problem sound familiar?

Many organizations today face this challenge as contact centers, and front- and back-office operations deliver a flood of performance data to the enterprise. Although this abundance of information provides some insight into “what” is going on, it has traditionally failed to answer the more important questions of “why?”

Today, new advances in performance management combine the power of performance analytics and speech analytics, enabling organizations to make sense of data to enhance performance across contact center, back-office and enterprise departments.

The goal of any performance-management solution should be to help organizations improve service, increase customer satisfaction and drive more profitable operations.

With the wealth of information pouring out of the contact center and back offices, performance-management solutions enable organizations to more easily identify the performance indicators that are most important to the organization, effectively changing performance management from a metrics-driven to results-driven initiative.

1. Performance Analytics
   Early performance-management information was often driven out of the finance department, the customer contact center or IT department. Today, performance analytics combine data from a variety of systems across the enterprise, including customer and operational databases such as CRM and ERP, to identify the most important KPIs that influence the most impactful behaviors and processes. Performance analytics sort through an array of operational metrics – productivity, service levels, throughput, backlog, quality – and deliver performance intelligence via a powerful dashboard. Armed with targeted KPIs, executives are empowered to make smarter decisions on the most effective ways to enhance overall operational performance.
2. Customer Interaction Analytics
   Performance management should also leverage the voice of the customer as a key source of performance intelligence. Organizations can leverage customer interactions captured in the contact center, and front- and back-office for insight into ongoing customer issues, process breakdowns and service challenges. The introduction of speech analytics into performance management delivers insight into the root causes of performance trends — from average handle time and first call resolution to customer defections and sales conversion rates. This actionable intelligence enables individuals to adopt more efficient processes, learn new skills and drive enterprisewide business performance.
3. Consulting and Training Services
   In addition to analytics technology, performance management should also include a consulting services program designed to apply this performance and customer intelligence to optimize business processes, enhance performance training and improve customer loyalty and retention. Because performance management touches departments throughout the enterprise, it is important that every layer of the organization is engaged in the execution of these process changes, from senior managers to individual service providers. Consultants can use proven best practices developed in extensive enterprise customer engagements to deliver deep expertise, from transaction and claims processing to finance, billing, marketing and sales.

In today’s complex contact centers and back-office processing areas, more timely and informed decisions can transform the results of enterprise performance. With the explosion of metrics from an ever-growing number of enterprise systems, executives can use analytics-driven performance management to deliver actionable intelligence and decipher which KPIs are really key and why.

By Mariann McDonagh, vice president, global marketing, Verint Systems Inc. Verint Systems is a leading global provider of analytic software-based solutions for communications interception, networked video and business intelligence.

Setting up your own call center entails a lot of monetary and human resource.

You might not have the technichal know-how or the business background to start everything from the ground up but you do have other options such as private placements.

A private placement is an investment right at the core of profit
Private placement is a term for investments in companies that are privately owned.

Most of the Philippine-owned call centers in the Philippines are still privately owned.

What are the advantages of private placements?
The main advantage of private placement investment is that shares of the company can be purchased at very low prices while the company is privately held (pre IPO). Once a company begins trading its shares on a public stock exchange stock prices may rise dramatically yielding a very high rate of return to the private investor.

What are the problems facing investors?

1. Learning about private placements in time to take advantage of very low prices.
2. Choosing the companies from numerous offerings that offer the best
   chance to succeed.
3. Being able to minimize risk

Generally private placement investments can involve high risk and so can show commensurate high rates of return. If the right choice is made the rewards relative to the investment are great. In all proposals a consistent and systematic analysis is necessary to enable an informed decision to be made. Risk is reduced by in-depth company selection process.

In the Philippines, some local call centers would want to expand but need more capital to fund the rollout of the expansion. This poses an opportunity to you as an investor as you can just approach the owners/board of directors of a call center company directly and ask them if they would allow additional investors by way of private placements.

Trying out private placements in other countries all by yourself might not be an easy task but do not fret as their are private equity investment firms and portfolio managers that can help you out in investing abroad. Venture Alliance Partners now involves their shareholders in building portfolio equity.

Just make sure you’ve done your research no matter which path in private placements you would like to take.

Surprisingly, taking on a supervisory role has become so challenging that many professionals feel unprepared for the new responsibility – or may even turn down the promotion. Not only do new supervisors have to grapple with the old standby challenges, such as making the transition from buddy to boss, but they face new realities like constantly changing job duties, an uncommitted and increasingly cynical workforce, and more organizational demands. This can be especially true within the contact center environment.In a recent AchieveGlobal study, managers at major corporations worldwide highlighted the six most important skill sets for today’s supervisors to be successful, as follows:

1. Motivating others. In this day and age, commitment, creativity and extra effort are required from everyone for an organization to achieve its goals. Supervisors must be able to inspire employees, help them believe in what they’re doing and motivate them to do their best work.
2. Adapting to new and changing situations – and helping others do the same. What new supervisors see as confusing job responsibilities, their managers view as managing change. Managers expect supervisors to feel comfortable dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty. “Routine” has gone the way of the nine-to-five workday, and new supervisors should expect the unexpected. It’s important to be prepared to adapt to change, and to consistently communicate any changes and the reasoning behind them.
3. Understanding the organization’s goals, and using them to motivate and prioritize. Managers in the study reported wishing they had a better concept of the corporate big picture when they started. As a result, they see this as critical for today’s new supervisors. A supervisor who knows the company’s core business, mission and goals also tends to better understand the competitive environment. Also, it can be difficult for new supervisors to determine how to spend their time. They seek direction, but often no one has the time to tell them what to do. Departmental or organizational goals or objectives are a fixed point supervisors can use to navigate.
4. Establishing productive relationships with managers – also known as managing up. First-time supervisors often expect too much direction from their own managers, who prefer for them to exercise their own judgment. At the same time, however, new supervisors must determine how to communicate so that both sides stay informed. It’s helpful to hold a series of “transition talks” with the manager, to determine his or her work style, communication preferences, goals and expectations.
5. Making a smooth transition into supervision. Managers in the study referred to problems with two types of supervisors: those who see their way as the only way, and those who lack confidence or have a hard time taking charge. Either way, a supervisor should “do” less and lead more, which requires trusting those who report to him or her and providing the freedom for employees to learn or fail. New supervisors need to shift their focus from the work itself to the people who do the work – supporting their needs, developing their abilities, removing obstacles and making resources available.
6. Delegating. Delegating – often the most challenging supervisory skill to learn – is vital to the success of the workgroup. But new supervisors tend to focus on the work itself and how to do it, rather than on assigning projects strategically to get the best results. Poor delegating leads to unhappy employees, failed results and extra work for the person in charge. Successful delegation involves planning ahead, following up and avoiding micromanagement. When it’s done right, supervisors get the results they need, while employees are more motivated to contribute quality work, have a positive feeling about their job and gain valuable skills and experience.

While it may take time to fully acclimate to the shift in responsibilities, stepping up to supervision is easier when the new supervisor starts out on the right foot. It’s crucial to spend time and energy building credibility, activating commitment within the workgroup and engaging the support of management. These “hallmarks to success” will give first-time supervisors and managers the traction they need to hit the ground running without losing their balance.

By Sharon Daniels, CEO of international training and consulting firm AchieveGlobal. (www.achieveglobal.com).

When people have problems understanding their computers, they often pick up a phone and call the computer maker’s help desk. Increasingly, that help desk may be in the Philippines, a growing player in the outsourcing market. More companies from high cost labor markets are shifting call center jobs to the Philippines.

In the Philippines the outsourcing business has exploded. Just five years ago it accounted for only a few thousand jobs, but by the end of this year, about 266,000 people are expected to be working in the sector.

Two thirds of those jobs will be in call centers - taking calls from customers needing technical help. The rest are in companies handling such work as medical and legal transcription, record management, animation and accounting.

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Publisher and broadcaster Tribune Co. on Friday said it will cut 250 call-center jobs at its daily newspapers and outsource those functions to a U.S. company with operations in the Philippines.

The cuts involve 120 full-time jobs and 130 part-time jobs, and affect papers such as the Chicago Tribune, Newsday on New York’s Long Island and The Baltimore Sun.

The company will outsource its customer service call center later this year as part of a companywide cost-cutting effort.

Starting in mid-December, customer service calls to the Lehigh Valley’s largest newspaper will be answered by a call center in the Philippines owned by APAC Customer Services of Deerfield, Ill.
Tribune’s largest paper, the Los Angeles Times, has already switched: It has used APAC for customer service calls since 1998, according to Jeff Reiter, Tribune’s director of corporate communications . Tribune plans to switch customer service for the rest of its 11 daily papers to APAC late this year and early next year.

It wasn’t stated as to how much APAC will save the company. But an estimated 50 percent of customer service costs might be the ballpark figure although there was no specific figures given. 

The Philippines has become a popular place for companies worldwide to look for call center workers. A trade group, the Contact Center Association of the Philippines, estimated this summer that the country’s call-center employment will rise from 179,000 people this year to 506,500 people in 2010. The group also estimates the industry’s revenues will rise from $2.6 billion this year to $7.3 billion in 2010.

Cisco Philippines acknowledged that the booming call center industry and the IT storage requirements of various industries are the main drivers for its growth in the Philippines.

The call center industry has contributed to Cisco Philippines’s 100% growth for fiscal year 2006 and is expected to achieve the same growth forecast for fiscal year 2007.

Cisco Philippines’ country manager said that while most Philippine-based BPO firms are still targeting the US market, he said some are already looking to Europe for possible opportunities.

Americans, it seems, hate calling a help desk or customer service number to find an Indian on the line. Well, guess what, America? India doesn’t particularly want to talk to you, either. As India’s top companies get more sophisticated at taking over outsourced work from U.S. and European multinationals, they’re finding that the lowest end of the business — call centers — just doesn’t pay anymore. “Call centers have become commoditized,” says B. Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Satyam Computer Services.

Lately, Indian outsourcers have begun turning down call center contracts, preferring better-paying deals for processing mortgages, handling insurance claims, overseeing payrolls, and more.

New Delhi-based EXL Services annulled a help desk call center contract with Dell because EXL was losing money on the deal.

“The business is a hard nut to crack,” says Rashesh Shah, chief executive of Bombay investment bank Edelweiss Capital. That has led to some high-profile departures. In June, Apple Computer pulled the plug on a call center in Bangalore due to the high cost of operating in India. Two months earlier, British utility Powergen cited rising wages when it withdrew from a contract with call center operator Vertex Data Science.

As a result, call centers are becoming a less important feature of the Indian business landscape. In 2000, they represented 85 percent of the total back-office business; now they’re about 35 percent, according to Nasscom, India’s outsourcing industry trade association.

Some jobs may migrate to the Philippines, which has a close cultural affinity with America, and to even cheaper locations such as South Africa or Ghana.