Cebu: Call Center Industry in the Philippines

The Philippines as an offshore outsource site
The Philippines is considered a major player in the global BPO market. This is because as a former American colony, the country's education system is patterned after the American education system and this includes American-style diction and pronunciation of the English language. This gives Filipino-English a neutral or an almost American accent, an advantage in dealing with the mostly American clientele. By contrast, while an emerging IT powerhouse, India's call center industry is criticized for having a language barrier due to the fact that Indians (as a former British colony) are educated in British-style English which is compounded by the heavy Indian accent. In 2005, the country ranked 3rd in the world for top BPO destinations, according to neoIT's 2005 Mapping Offshore Markets Update.

The Philippines is also considered as location of choice due to its less expensive labor costs and its steady supply of computer, electronics and internet savvy college graduates who view call center work as a career rather than a temporary job.

The country offers 24/7 multilingual and multimedia supported premium services for marketing, sales, customer care, crisis management, investor relations and other key business applications. The reasons cited for the bullish outlook towards the Philippines have been, among others, due to lower operating costs, English language proficiency and high ICT skills yet low-cost workforce.

Also cited among the country's competitive edges were the accounting system that were modeled after the general accounting procedures in the United States, and local information and communications service providers that can integrate offshore back-office-processing systems with US-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. Investors are given substantial incentives when locating operation in the Philippines information technology-based zones.

A study by the Swiss International Institute for Management Development in 2004 found that among Asian countries, the Philippines was the number one in the availability of skilled labor. Moreover, the ease in training Filipinos to take over jobs requiring greater competencies and responsibilities was cited as another reason.

Most investors love the Filipino work ethic, personality and hospitality. As a person, Filipinos take time to understand others beyond race or culture and after that, go on to empathize with them especially during times of great need. Superior customer service is one of the characteristics Filipinos are known for.