The best place in the world for contact center outsourcing is the Philippines. It’s just that simple. “There’s a reason the country is known as the call center capital of the world,” says Ralf Ellspermann, CEO of PITON-Global, a mid-sized call center in the Philippines
More than 800 Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) providers operate in the Philippines today. They employ more than 1.3 million Filipinos and generate US$29 billion in annual revenue—that’s an astonishing eight percent of the nation’s GDP! According to Ellspermann, “More than half of the companies making up the Fortune 500 either outsource their call center requirements to the Philippines or have set up their own operations in the country. The infrastructure and networking that have grown out of those relationships has opened the contact center industry up to smaller businesses including startups and SMEs.”
There are still quite a few misconceptions about contact center outsourcing to the Philippines. Below we list and debunk the top three:
#1 Low quality
This is perhaps the most common, and certainly the most inaccurate, misconception about contact centers in the Philippines.
Nothing in the world is perfect. Any time you’re dealing with a group as large as the one million Filipinos who work in call centers in the country, you’re going to wind up with a few bad experiences. However, those bad experiences are not the norm, provided that companies take the right outsourcing approach.
Just like doing business anywhere else in the world, you get what you pay for when you outsource your contact center needs to the Philippines. “Low-cost providers compete on price, not quality, and typically provide sub-par services, leading to bad customer experiences and complaints. But paying just a few dollars more per hour gets you into the premium segment of the industry, and these industry-leading companies provide the some of the best contact center services in the world,” explains Ellspermann.
#2 Loss of control
It’s understandable that some people would be concerned about outsourcing front- and back -office processes to a third-party provider across the globe, but geography doesn’t really mean much in today’s modern business world. “Through the use of cutting-edge technologies, you can monitor performance, offer feedback, and direct operations to your agents in the Philippines just as well as you can in your own building back at home these days,” says Ellspermann.
Contact center outsourcing to the Philippines is very common among the most successful businesses in the world. They wouldn’t trust their considerable bottom lines to centers that operated in the dark and beyond measurement or contact.
If you’ve got a computer, you’ve got everything you need to monitor the call center services you’re paying for and to direct their operations. Additionally, with real-time data analytics and data collection, you’ll have the numbers to show exactly how your money is being spent. Where you are physically sitting when you do this is irrelevant.
#3 Only for large organizations
Outsourcing to a contact center in the Philippines might seem like something only for Fortune 500 corporations, but those big and well-established businesses have actually paved the way for smaller ones too. They have turned the Philippines into such an efficient and advanced home for call centers that the services are now available for everyone.
Contact center outsourcing to the Philippines is for businesses of just about any size or industry, including startups and SMEs. There is enough competition that you’ll have no problem finding a center that is eager to work with you. The Philippine call center industry is so well established that its momentum generates its own growth, creating a practically limitless sea of opportunity for new businesses of any size looking to get in.
The Bottom Line
There are many misconceptions about the contact center outsourcing industry in the Philippines, but the simple fact of the matter is that call centers in the Philippines are well-established, well-trained, and well-supported by global businesses. They have been so for over twenty years.
“So, if you’ve been thinking about outsourcing your contact center requirements to the Philippines, then consider this your signal to go. You’ll be making the same decision that Fortune 500 companies have been making for more than two decades. All with great success,” concludes Ellspermann.
