Call Centers -- RP's Emerging Sunshine Industry
The call center service has been dubbed the country's latest sunshine industry, expected to generate around 24,000 jobs in the next two years. When a door closes, a window opens. Even as the Philippines feels the fallout from the global IT crunch, it has benefited from the prevailing cost-cutting trend in an unexpected way -- an unprecedented boom in the call center business.
Indeed, the call center service has been dubbed the country's latest sunshine industry, with the sector expected to generate around 24,000 jobs in the next two years, according to Toby Monsod, former assistant secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). "It's a very promising industry. Everybody's growing and hiring," Benedict Hernandez, Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) chair, said in a recent interview.
From 2000 to 2001, the segment reportedly grew by more than 200 percent, and local call center revenues are projected to increase from $173 million in 2002 to $864 million in 2004. Optimism runs high as an international research group forecasts the growth of ICT-enabled services to a $200-billion industry by the year 2010, with the call center segment's share at $42 billion.
Reports say that in the United States alone, there are 1.5 million call center seats that could be outsourced, and so far the Philippines has less than 10,000 seats filled, indicating the domestic industry's huge potential.
What are call centers?
A call center is a central customer service operation where agents (often called customer care specialists or customer service representatives) handle telephone calls on behalf of a client. Clients include mail-order catalog houses, telemarketing companies, computer product help desks, banks, financial service and insurance groups, transportation and freight handling firms, hotels and IT companies.
The size of an operation is described in terms of the number of "seats." A seat consists of a station with two or three people alternating in several shifts to provide 24-hour call center service. The industry's main target markets include the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Many factors contribute to the local industry's sizzling development pace. One is the rising cost of doing business in industrialized countries like the United States, forcing foreign companies to downsize and outsource peripheral e-services to developing countries like the Philippines to cut overheads.
CCAP president Jose Ferreros also cites the better power and telecommunications infrastructure, competitive labor cost in terms of quality and value for money, and strong government support for ICT-related industries.
telephone as a major constant business tool. This multi-line digital phone sets the new standard in easy
help that customer find the product or service that caters to their needs and wants. Along with that,
The customer support and customer service functions are more than departments; they are part of an essential strategy for growing your business. In the modern business climate, customers expect answers to their questions immediately. When the right information is available anytime, from anywhere in the world, customers are more likely to have a positive experience, thus customer loyalty will be increased. It is a known fact that the cost to obtain a customer is ten times higher than to maintain and keep existing customers. (Gouran, Dennis, W.E. Wiethoff, & J.A. Doelger. (1994). Mastering communication. 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.) Not in Reference Pg.
Along with the incredible opportunities the Internet has created, this global connectivity also has exposed businesses to an excess of regional issues that can dramatically alter a business' potential for profit or loss and also change the risks and threats to the business.
The significant level of outsourcing programs used across all business sectors is well documented in the literature (Bender 1999; Quinn 2000; Dun and Bradstreet 2000; Klaas, McClendon and Gainey 2001). Past research has progressed along several paths. First, some researchers have focused on motivations and reasons for outsourcing activities (Conner and Prahalad 1996; Greer et al. 1999; Sinderman 1995; Mullin 1996; Grant 1996; Frayer Scannell and Thomas 2000). According to this perspective, the global imperative for outsourcing accelerates as firms evolve from sellers of products and services abroad to setting up operations in foreign countries and staffing those operations with host countries or third party nationals (Greer et al. 1999). Most corporations believe that in order to compete globally, they have to look at efficiency and cost containment rather than relying strictly on revenue increases (Conner and Prahalad 1996). As companies seek to enhance their competitive positions in an increasingly global marketplace, they are discovering that they can cut costs and maintain quality by relying more on outside service providers for activities viewed as supplementary to their core businesses (Mullin 1996; Grant 1996).
Globalization can not only affect a company opening an office in another country but it can affect a small local business as well. As the internet brings the world closer together it becomes far more likely that a business that opened with no intention of selling internationally will have customers form different parts of the world asking for their product. For instance a steel company located in Pennsylvania may suddenly find orders coming in from South American factories. How the steel plant chooses to handle this new international customer could mean ...
Domestic Expansion: Growth has been at 20% p.a. during the last years and Telepizza is positive for an ongoing growth by comparisons to the US-market. TP knows on the other hand that market penetration is going to be a tough job since there is already a TP in every Spanish city with more than 20.000 inhabitants,. Hence, domestic growth can mainly be obtained by upsizing the volume per order.
Taylor, P. and Bain, P. (2003) 'Call Centre Organizing in Adversity: From Excel to Vertex' in G. Gall (ed.)
Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that employment services (temporary staffing) will grow at twice the growth rate of the overall economy by 636,000 jobs in the next 10 years
We intend to exploit our leadership role by continuing to target and enter segments of the communications market that we believe will experience rapid growth or grow faster than the industry as a whole....
Potential new entrants: With positive economic outlook, fine business environment, and increasing number of population growth rate, it is expected that there will be more companies coming in the industry;
McDonalds believe that good customer service is the responsibility of everybody in the company. Every employee has a part to play in providing with a service with best practise found anywhere in the trade.
Businesses are now able to approach overseas markets, they are no longer confined to their areas of establishment. Business today is inextricably intertwined with technology, from the smallest home office, to a multinational corporation with multiple monolithic legacy applications. It is impossible to be in business today without confronting the issues of technology. The way we do business today is different than 30 years ago. Technology has evolved around the areas of telecommunications, travel, stock markets, shipping and even around our daily lives.
This survey clearly indicates that outsourcing is prevalent, with prevalence to outsource to domestic service providers. The Gartner Group estimates that outsourcing will be a 50 billion dollar industry by the end of 2007 (Singh, 2006).
...ll as private sectors have gone international with new ventures outside the country. These companies are generating revenue, though modest compared to their overall sales revenue, by deputing their expert personnel outside.