Call centers in the Philippines have grown both in number and in size since they started taking root in the archipelago in the early 90s. Today, the call center and BPO industries are booming in the country and they are still growing. The call centers in the Philippines have grown at such a pace that the country is considered one of the frontrunners in the global market, second only to India.
The business process outsourcing (BPO) ball started rolling when the larger and more notable call center companies started to set up offices in Manila, Philippines. Initially, giant outsourcing service providers built call centers in the Philippines, specifically in the country’s financial center, Makati City. Currently, call centers in the Philippines are all around the big cities on the islands, including Mandaluyong, Taguig, Davao, and Cebu. With the country’s investor-friendly policies and laws, low wages and low operating costs (electricity, real estate, and infrastructure), and highly educated and experienced talent pool, more companies are choosing to outsource some of their business processes and non-core operations to call centers in the Philippines.
Call centers in the Philippines started out pretty much with just handling email support and other business processes. This eventually evolved into handling a variety of operations like customer and technical support, and even education and financial services. The emergence of knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) has led outsourcing service providers in the country to expand further to offer services like legal and intellectual property consulting, research, data management, and content services, among other knowledge-intensive processes.
Call centers in the Philippines are not limited to offering services to clients in the United States, especially since President Obama revealed his program about offshoring that is unfriendly to US companies outsourcing to offshore locations. Philippine BPO companies also cater to companies from countries like Ireland, Great Britain, and Australia, among others so call centers in the Philippines aren’t really limited to providing service to companies in the US.
The country’s high English proficiency and its citizens’ affinity to Western cultures give it an edge in taking a sizeable chunk of the global outsourcing market. Another improvement to call centers in the Philippines comes in the form of scalability. In the early days of the industry, only large multinational companies had access to outsourced manpower since they can afford to set up their own offices in an offshore location or contract a large number of seats from an outsourcing service provider. These days, smaller call centers in the Philippines can provide services that are both scalable and customizable, making BPOs flexible enough to be available for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
In the long run, call centers in the Philippines are expected to grow more as demand for low cost, high quality service grows. The country is expected to keep its hold on a chunk of the outsourcing market, though it will have to improve some of its internet and telecommunications infrastructure to do so. Other improvements may be necessary, especially with IT training and such, but we have yet to see what the country has up its sleeve for both the call centers in the Philippines and their foreign clients.