Philippine Call Centers VS. India Call Centers
The Philippines has officially overtook India in call centers and voice related work as of today, and how exactly did that happen?
· The Philippines was colonized by the Americans for roughly 48 years so there is a strong similarity and familiarity towards the American culture and many Filipinos now live in the USA as well.
· What is more, English is used in the education system and is widely spoken by Filipinos. And the Philippines Produces Hundreds of thousands of English Speaking College Graduates each year.
· Filipino officials visited India to See for themselves and study if why Call Centers Industry is such a big one in India. When they returned to the Philippines, they rationalized the approval process for the setting up of call centers and changed their rules to allow individual buildings to become special economic zones offering tax breaks, quick clearances for permits and exemptions from import duties for necessary IT and Telco equipment. In addition, a government-sponsored training program through TESDA was created to improve the English and communication skills of students who wish to work in the industry.
· Philippine senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago said she would file a measure to further jump-start support for the BPO industry and its workers plus she urged other legislators to come up with laws that would support this so-called “booming sunshine industry” in the country.
· The Philippines has a lot more younger work force than those of in India.
To summarize, The Philippines has formally overtaken the Call Center crown from India by adopting through a lot of things and by still curving literacy through the industry as we speak. But in the contrary we are still far behind by a few aspects by India Including IT and software related jobs since India produces about nearly half a million IT graduates each year. In short The Philippines has overtaken India in call centers, however it remains far behind in more sophisticated outsourcing services.
Call Center Crash Course, Does It Help?
During the early years of the call center industry, one of the most in-demand services is English proficiency training, since customer service and outbound telemarketing for the US that time was something relatively new to Filipinos and that for us to be able to cope with it, an excellent command of the English language is a must and we have to admit that those kind of training really helped a lot. Now, as years go by, because of the rapid growth of the industry and the huge demand of agents it entails, most BPO companies decided to do in-house training, fusing it with the company’s existing training procedure which actually help them save time and of course money. Because of this, the need for training services from third party companies had lessened dramatically. During its silence, a new breed of training centers came out, the call center training institutes that offers short term courses for people who wants to enter the call center industry, they provide basic trainings such as grammar, American culture, geography and a little bit of everything.
I would say it’s a good idea but If you would really want to be a competitive candidate for any call center, it would take more than a crash course to get you in, especially if you are competing with other candidates that already had call center experiences, I’ve done recruitment before for a call center in Ortigas and I would say that I’m not that impressed with applicants that boasts about their call center training, I’m not saying that they are terrible, all I’m trying to say is, if I want myself trained, I would definitely want to know what’s really important. What I’m pointing out is to go more in dept and focus on the important parts. If you want to train call center agents, train them on phone skills, phone ethics, build confidence, spontaneity and train them to think on their feet. Most of the applicants I interviewed before can’t even look straight at me and can’t even express themselves. Bottom line is, for people out there who are planning to take training courses for call center, look at what they have to offer, what’s their training program and what does it cover. For those who are doing training and are planning to do call center training, consider my words as pieces of advice, all of those came from first hand experiences.
-rgs
