So, before I continue dabbling in what I do, let me present Global Services’ January 2012 issue of its magazine and survey that may or will impact the call center industry in the Philippines, especially between the end-users and the vendors like myself. Please refer to the “Source” (below) for access to the digital magazine.

–oOo–

2012 will have moderate increases in outsourced services, including outsourced call center services; two-thirds of survey respondents see a positive year.

The second semester of 2011 saw significant downtrends in IT spending, especially for start-ups and expansions of small and mid-sized call centers in the Philippines. I should know because I lost six contract for my cloud-based call center solution in that period not from competitors but from the decision to forego the set up or simply abandon the entire plan for fear of the impact of the global recession in the U.S. From my rough-and-tumble survey, I’ve been hearing a more positive outlook for the first semester of 2012, and buried plans of 2011 are being dug up for implementation early this year.

–oOo–

Reducing operational costs is still the key driver to outsourcing, followed by creating more bandwidth for strategic growth – the core value propositions of outsourcing remain unchanged. However, the importance of cloud-based delivery models promising to make outsourcing more effective remains the least important priority this 2012. Cloud computing is a “game changer” because of its disruptive nature. That’s probably why it’s considered the least important priority as a business driver for 2012. Still, half of the respondents feel the need to rethink issues in light of adopting cloud-based models but they are uncertain on how to adopt it. So, the traditional way of doing it is to wait until acceptance of cloud-based solutions becomes the norm; then, they’ll start integrating it into their strategies and operations.

The small and mid-sized businesses, especially the SMB (or SME) call centers, have always been the early adaptors of new technology like cloud computing. The large enterprises, always cautious and in the waiting game stages, will now have to slowly integrate cloud-based solutions to their operations; they actually have no choice anymore. However, in-country regulations and industry laws still bar many from adopting the cloud on a large-scale endeavor. An example is a rule or two of the Philippine central banking board, though vague as many bankers say, that prohibit banks from implementing social media as a transactional means. So, an outsourced vendor of call center services is totally out of the picture.

–oOo–

One glaring inhibitor to outsourcing is the assumption that it entails new upfront investments to manage the outsourced relationship, together with reduced budgets. Add the changes to the organization – how will the client’s remaining employees adopt to outsourcing? Will they take the burden of change? So, only if it can be done with less investment and less change will outsourcing be a major driver in business.

America and the rest of the First World nations need to understand that outsourcing is a change that will only go faster; it won’t go away. Therefore, to counter this change, new skills have to be implemented and training the old workforce is key to adopting to the flat and outsourced world. U.S. President Barack Obama’s battle-cry of bringing back the jobs from the outsourcing countries is foolhardy; he needs to hold hands with the academic institutions of the U.S. and collaborate to re-train its unemployed in creating a new job order for America. Note that even if unemployment dipped a little bit in the U.S., real statistics will show you a spike in unemployment for those who served in the military ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. These heroes now back in the states are jobless.

–oOo–

About reduced budgets, these cuts really would be on capital investments and not on operating expense related activities. Therefore, the focus to use outsourcing as a cost-reduction tool will continue in 2012. US and Europe IT spends are expected to decrease to 5.5 percent in 2012, from estimated growth of 11 percent. So, buyers are increasingly trying to consolidate their IT services as portfolio and thereby arrive at cost savings.

The fiscal demands of the business will always outweigh national sentiments and political maneuvering. Cost reduction has and will always be the major if not the biggest reason to outsource. Consolidation has been ongoing for the past years, i.e. large consumer products companies that once outsourced service and support functions have brought it back and be managed internally, insourced yet still using cheaper labor elsewhere. IT solutions to consolidate and integrate insourcing continues to be a tool to enhancing and updating the processes.

–oOo–

Significant increase in IT spends in outsourcing are likely to come from emerging companies and economies. In Q1 2012, 350 companies are expected to invest more than $1B in IT. The main reason behind this is they comprehend that IT impacts their business performance and that there are many benefits to by spending on moving applications to the cloud.

The Philippines, surpassing India in 2010 as the top outsourced call center country in the world, continues to increase this industry by about 25 percent per annum since five or more years ago. This will continue in 2012 with the inclusion of more IT investments involving the use of cloud computing tools and applications. The merger of premise-based and cloud-based solutions will heighten this year with cloud solutions surpassing traditional enterprise systems for some.

–oOo–

The growth areas for BPO in 2012 are:

1. Industry-specific processes
2. Analytics outsourcing
3. Customer care

Customer care will always be at this list; it is something that will never go away. However, more of the business processes once needed to be internally driven have not seeped its way out to the outsourcing company. This even includes analytics and business intelligence functions that allow businesses to keep score of its delivery mechanisms, products and services, to its consumers.

–oOo–

BPO is more of an ongoing expense not a discretionary expense. Companies will continue to look for ways to cut costs out of their operations. Earlier buyers approach revolved primarily around cost cutting without due consideration on the long term perspective, or the approaches will take 2-3 years to see some benefits. In 2012, they will look for a balanced set of outcome or decisions that will help realize some of the short term objective without compromising on long term benefit.

This year, cost-savings due to labor rates is just one of the major reasons to outsource. Outsourcing companies and IT vendors will now have to work hand-in-hand to develop integrated systems and solutions that can immediately convince client-buyers of outsourcing services to select them. The delivery system of the outsourcing companies will now include in-depth reengineering and recommendation of changes of the client-buyer’s business processes than traditional hand-to-mouth delivery services of yesterday.

–oOo–

By outsourcing several business processes and IT systems to one provider, companies can free up cost and management resources while acquiring the strategic flexibility and capability for growth and to embrace the trends to drive competitive differentiation. Therefore, the role of the service integrator will continue to rise. The cloud brings a set of third parties into the mix whose services cut across traditional lines. The cloud has magnified the issues of a multi-sourced environment and strategic sourcing has become not just an integral but a critical part of IT and business strategy agendas. It is not just cloud services; it is all services IT provides to enable the business.

Cloud-based vendors will now become major resources of consolidated delivery services to free up more of the resources of outsourcing vendors and client-buyers. If before that objective was met only on the mindset of “doing what you do great” yet continuing to employ duplicate workforce functions, this year will see a total elimination of the duplication, and trusting the outsourcing vendor to provide error-free and on-time delivery of services.

–oOo–

In the last two years, enterprises prefer working with credible outsourcers who focus on effectiveness than efficiencies. It is about partnering with vendors who have demonstrated that they can create business value – e.g. increase the client’s revenue by architecting new product and services and skin-in-the-game contracts. Now that cost savings due to offshoring and simple process optimization are done, buyers are seeking more value. They want service providers to contribute in ways that will impact their business.

Vendors will now have to up the ante in delivering more for the same price. Cloud solutions will help ensure profits at both ends.

–oOo–

Banking BPO have seen a rising cost of servicing each loan last year. So, they are looking at 2012 to standardize loan origination and convert fixed costs to variable costs. The majority of set ups and expansions in banking BPO will be in Asia Pacific and CEE. We have (also) witnessed a 20% rise in real estate outsourcing services to middle market firms over the past three years. These firms are outsourcing at a faster pace as a means to create operational nimbleness and gain strategic competitive advantage. They also want the services available to larger companies to help their competitive position.

More industries that have relied in traditional means of outsourced services are now gearing up to shop outside their comfort zones.

–oOo–

Call centers with the right people, process and technology will be in a great position to deliver solutions that organization do not have the ability to invest in delivering, or would take years to develop their own operating best practices.

Where silos existed before, a criss-cross and mesh of collaborations will start to happen inside the call center in order to meet the growing demands of client-buyers and its consumers.

–oOo–

Traditionally, call centers are limited by their geography to a job-recruiting radius of about 50 miles, and the hiring constraints that come with that geographical location. Hence, 2012 will see the need for creating a home-based or at-home labor pool that will drive operating efficiency. This model provides a wider hiring footprint with the corporate hub focused on hiring and training that improve work and life balances for the at-home workforce. This concept will ultimately overcome the rigid scheduling challenges of call center-based operations while complementing existing in-center customer care support, providing various types of talent, shifts and scale for seasonality and call volume, regardless of location. So, the suggestion is to include at least 10-20 percent at-home labor force.

Though at-home services have existed for decades, recent acceptance and implementation of cloud-based solutions will fast-track the use of the at-home labor pool. Recruitment and IT systems will need to change to accommodate this change. New processes will be implemented to reduce or eliminate chaos. Above all these, the cloud will be the biggest support system.

–oOo–

A lot of contact centers will be moving to the cloud – both hardware and software. CRM software is already going to the cloud. The global market for cloud services is predicted to surge to US$148.8B in 2014 from US $68.3 billion in 2010. This shows that there will be a huge transformation in the business model of any organization. The cloud service providers should work aggressively on finding out the solutions to cloud security as its one of the biggest issues when we talk about cloud.

As I mentioned above, small and medium-sized businesses and outsourcers have already been in the cloud since last year or more. 2012 will see the larger players start to accept and integrate cloud-based solutions to become a key ingredient in making themselves more competitive and profitable.

–oOo–

Most of services offered by software vendors today will soon be offered as “as-a-Service” because it gives cost efficiency which is acceptable to most of the customers. As such, enterprises will eventually be forced to standardize their processes (for competitive-parity business functions), to embrace the lowest-cost solutions in order to ensure that underlying cost structures meet industry averages. As a result, clients will need to clearly identify business processes providing competitive parity, along with their underlying IT services, for analyzing “as a service” potential.

The cloud has forced vendors to convert capital-intesive investments that end users have to pony-up to a recurring yet smaller expense to the bottom line. Even hardware-based investments will begin to become “as-a-service” offer than traditional downpayment and amortized payments for something that can become obsolete in a year. Most services, outsourced or otherwise, are now shifting to the “as-a-service” model.

–oOo–

In BPO, high performing businesses will continue to extract significantly more value out of their investments if they approach outsourcing as a partnership with their service providers. Buyers are looking at outsourcing as a driver of business value – to help operate their businesses better and to deliver measurable business outcomes – and that is best achieved with a true business partner. To that end, we expect clients to be much more discerning about their outsourcing providers.

I belong to the outbound, telemarketing-type of outsourced call center service providers for a decade. Traditionally, it’s always been a hand-to-mouth, “do everything for me” type of service to sell a client’s product or service, as the client sits and waits for the confirmed orders to arrive. Last year, I’ve witnessed many clients have begun to work hand-in-hand with the outsourced call centers, including but not limited to onsite training (which was once a telephone-based engagement only) and new delivery processes that were developed together and not just by the client. The assessment process of the client have now become more exact or discerning; so, gone are the “wait and see” attitude of clients towards the outsourced call center.

–oOo–

Providers will need to possess industry, technical and functional knowledge. They will need the proven ability to deliver end-to-end processes and deploy analytics in order to identify opportunities to improve and add value to a client’s business. And they need a strong transformational capability by making change management a priority. Therefore, outcome oriented model is becoming the norm. Certain services which are at the bottom of the value chain are becoming increasingly commoditized putting margin pressures on traditional large outsourcing services companies.

Call centers were traditionally seen as a do-it-all type of business, operating under the idea that the technical knowledge need not be brought down to the outsourced call center. Today, clients are shopping around for outsourced call centers that have more of the technical and functional knowlege. An example is for the call center to hire experienced or licensed real estate brokers just to conduct cold calling to prospects; before, call center reps simply relied on the script and delivered this like myna birds.

–oOo–

Enterprise mobility, cloud computing, managed services, machine-to-machine communications, and product engineering service are some of the areas that will witness growth in 2012.

IT vendors need to bring computing power from the PC to the cloud and now to a mobile computing platform such as smartphones. The call center may see the advent of service delivery through the mobile phone.

–oOo–

European and US enterprises will continue to battle rising costs and productivity issues. The hunt is for service providers that can add value and bring a mix of everything-low cost, innovation and overall efficiency.

Cost-reduction is still King, but value-added services at the same or reduced price will be a common-ground battle for the contract.

–oOo–

Healthcare is expected to consume a significant chunk of outsourcing services. Traditional areas like banking and financial services will see growing demand for e-banking, online authentication and automation services. Hospitality is another opportunity area; a growing number of hotels will use technology like GDS (Global Distribution Systems) and IDS (Internet Distribution Systems) to increase online visibility and enable guests to book online. In addition, hotels are looking at outsourcing non-core technology functions like managed services, internet marketing and loyalty management. The bottomline for service providers? They need to have improved domain knowledge (i.e. industry-specific operational knowledge) to be able to play in different verticals.

Consolidation and better yet remote service delivery models through the use of the cloud will become the common factor in providing more for less.

–oOo–

Many organizations want to leverage cloud, SaaS and mobility tools but don’t have the domain visibility to select the best ones or the integration experience. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are starting to invest heavily in cloud, SaaS and enterprise mobility technology. However, few of these businesses have the technical expertise to develop this technology in-house.

Educating the market on what exactly the cloud, SaaS and mobility technologies can do for their business, whether small or large enterprise type, is still a wanting thing vendors need to spend on just to get the deal closed.

–oOo–

2012 will be the year in which cloud sourcing supplants traditional outsourcing. Thereís no question that cloud computing has transformed the way companies do business. Organizations are now sourcing complete business solutions through the public cloud using a combination of cloud applications, platforms and infrastructure. We expect that outsourcing companies will become more specialized in 2012 and will include some cloud-based tools in their offerings.

Whereas cloud-based call center solutions were using the traditional model, i.e. long-term contract, upfront payments, cloud vendors with newer models like prepaid or pay-as-you-go, start-and-stop anytime and freeware but with the same full suite of functionality, will become the deal breaker for servicing more call center customers.

–oOo–

The return on investment for BPO is no longer generated from the reduced cost of a transaction but rather from staffing quality and flexibility, tools, process improvement and innovation that remains inherent in the culture of third party global service providers.

Obviously, with the global economic earthquake happening everywhere, transactional cost just won’t bring back the black ink on the financial health of businesses. A consolidated, collaborative and integrated approach to outsourcing that affects the bottom line are what enterprises will be looking for this year.

–oOo–

Pressure on suppliers will continue, meaning that pricing will be flat – but not down – compared to 2010/11 levels. Moreover, weak exchange rates and weakness of the U.S. dollar, will put increased pressure on suppliers. This could be a good time for businesses to get good deals on contract terms. Increasingly, outsourcing will move away from staff augmentation/time and materials toward output-based pricing and managed services.

The “terms and conditions” will now be dictated by the business owner, not the vendor. So, call center solutions providers need to be prepared to deal with these new conditions business are looking for, especially for cloud-based services.

–oOo–

Eastern Europe and Central and South America are surging and buyers will increasingly utilize existing supplier’s Global Delivery Models to provide time-zone coverage and realize true 24x7x365 support. Offshore players will also continue to expand and/or setup operations in new geographies, such as Brazil, Poland, China, Mexico and Colombia.

The voice-based, English language outsourcing business will continue to propel the Philippines as the number one country in the world (see Why the Philippines is the World’s Top Call Center Country) However, non-voice outsourced services community have been growing and language-specific requirements will be going to new economies in Europe and south of the U.S.

–oOo–

CONCLUSION: 2012 will be the year in which cloud sourcing supplants traditional outsourcing. There’s no question that cloud computing has transformed the way companies do business. There are now two million users of Salesforce.com around the world and 25 million users of Google Apps. Organizations are now sourcing complete business solutions through the public cloud using a combination of cloud applications, platforms and infrastructure. There are good reasons why this happening. Public cloud services give companies much more granular control over their IT environments. They also offer a much cheaper alternative to traditional outsourcing – some businesses can cut their costs by as much as 85% by going down the cloud sourcing route.

Source: Global Services Outlook 2012

Title photo by henrylvreyes at Flickr.com | Emerald Avenue, call center avenue of Manila

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Historically, the Philippines has always been an occupied country. Spain ruled the islands for 333 years, followed by 45 years with the United States in 1898 with a brief period of occupation by the Japanese during World War II until it was liberated by the United States again. On July 4, 1946, the United States granted the Philippines its independence as a sovereign country. Since then, American culture has always taken a frontline in the lifestyle of the modern Filipino.

The most obvious reason why Filipinos excel in the call center world is their excellent verbal and written communication skills in English. The country is in itself the only English-speaking nation in East Asia. Though there are 120 up to 175 disparate languages (or locally known as dialects) in the country, English stands out as the common one. It is the language of choice used in schools for all levels. No matter where you go in the Philippines, when you speak English to the locals, they will respond back in an understandable manner. When Filipinos speak English, we have one of the most neutral speaking styles in the world. Filipinos talk in a smooth way that most Americans immediately understand, with a describable “calm” manner of speaking.

The Philippines’ style of doing business has always mimicked the United States. Our form of government, accounting practices, and legal policies, to name a few, are very similar to the American system. Even the country’s lifestyle reverberates “American” as loudly as it can: Starbucks, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Krispy Kreme, TGI Friday’s, Hard Rock Cafe, to say the least, are prevalent in the urban areas. It is not difficult for an American to insert himself into Philippine society simply because everything you see is as American as it can be.

Being considered a developing country, Filipinos always find ways to fix things and use them until they get old or broken, or troubleshoot problems until there are no escapable solutions available anymore. This trait makes Filipinos frugal with the things they own and do, at home and the workplace. Hence, creativity, sound judgment and common sense are often used in resolving issues and fixing broken things regardless of each one’s craft or expertise.

The culture of the Philippines is all about respect for the elder, including elder brothers and sisters. Filipinos are non-confrontational and are generally considered to be a submissive lot. Everyone who is older is considered a big brother, big sister, aunt, uncle or grandparent, translated into its native language or dialect. The words “po” and “ho” (and its versions in the hundred-plus dialects) are always inserted in a sentence to signify respect to the elder, much like putting the Japanese suffix “san” in people’s names. So, it is common practice for Filipinos to address Americans with “sir” or “ma’am” repeatedly, and in almost every sentence. It’s just the way Filipinos talk.

Now, put these characteristics and traits inside the call center and you’ve got one of the most respectful, “the customer is always right,” and “try as much as you can to solve it” type of service delivery in the world. The Philippine culture fits perfectly with the demands of customer service in the call center world. When an irate customer yells, the Filipino always says “I’m sorry” and continues to be respectful through the course of the entire conversation. When a customer complains, the Filipino finds all means available to fix the problem, sometimes going out of his way to do so.

Outsourcing customer service and technical support to the Philippines is probably one of the best decisions a U.S.-based company can do. Only new technology – systems and procedures – including the client’s style of doing business, stand out as something the American company needs to teach the Filipino. Other than that, everything else about communication and customer service is in place. In a world where fiscal demands outweigh the natural order of things, a U.S. company’s best bet is to use the Philippines as its primary means to outsource; because you can’t go wrong with an American culture and system already in place for the past 100 years.

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I wrote this article early last year while I was employed with a Utah-based hosted call center technology company. It was one of the only two blogs they had (and still have) that spoke of the Philippines and its call center industry. The other is entitled Call Center Outsourcing 2.0.

For the image, the painting is entitled “Mano po, Lola” by Jasmin Orosa. “Mano po” is an old, traditional and respective way of greeting the elderly in the Philippines, followed by taking the back of the hand of the elder and gently placing it on your forehead. You can purchase the original acrylic painting at Saatchionline.com.

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Think about it! The moment a tourist boards a plane bound for the Philippines, the customer experience begins and ends the moment he steps back into an airplane bound for his country of origin. Is the customer experience what we’d like it to be if we were in his or her shoes? Today, I will stand by my observation that the customer experience in Philippine tourism experience is at its low side, not necessarily worst.

Boss! D’ Plane! D’ Plane!

The tourism department and travel service companies take a detailed look into every moment of contact with the customer, from the check-in counter, waiting at the gate, method of boarding, walking through the walkway tube, entering the plane, finding his or her seat, storing the luggage, sitting down, getting comfortable, waiting for everyone to board, waiting more for the control tower to give the go signal to taxi into the runway, takeoff, in-flight services like meals, drinks, reading materials, internet access, landing, taxi to the arrival gate, getting the luggage, walking out of the plane, walking inside the tube, looking for immigration, lining up for immigration procedures, talking to the immigration officer, looking for the luggage carousel, getting the luggage, proceeding to customs, conversations with the customs officer, getting transportation, waiting for transportation, and eventually leaving the airport.

That’s just arrival. Did I miss anything?

Recently, the original international airport terminal, called NAIA 1 (Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Terminal 1), was tagged as the worst airport in the world by a poll made by The Guide to Sleeping in Airports, a successor to the Budget Traveller’s Guide to Sleeping in Airports that has been online since 1994. This travel site were created by Donna McSherry, a 30-something Canadian-born travel agent specializing in South America. Though it was not something that came out of a global news entity like CNN, still, this travel site gets millions of hits a month, if not per week, that the “no vote of confidence” stung the country as a whole. Even Filipino Efren Peñaflorida, the CNN Hero of 2009 who started the novel idea of the pushcart classrooms, was robbed in the airport premises of Terminal 2 while he and his colleague were waiting for a car to pick them up.

NAIA-1 terminal manager Dante Basanta was quoted by GMA News Online as saying, “It’s rather unfair, (dahil) because we are working so hard to improve the services and facilities at the premier airport.” He touted the improvements to include refurbished ceilings, upholstered seats, and a more spacious arrival area. He added, “We cannot compete with other airports kasi hindi naman masyadong modern ang airport natin. We can only do so much with the old facilities.” Well, there you go. The obvious reason why NAIA Terminal 1 will continue to be what it is today. Do you think selling the airport terminal is the answer to this problem? Isn’t that just a “Band Aid” solution?

Where do you think P’Noy should start re-engineering the tourism industry?

Despite the tourist arrival targets of the Department of Tourism, the sad reality is that even the local population couldn’t mistake tagging their airport as worse than what they’ve seen in other countries. We can continue the flow of customer experience with dozens more of the “Moments of Truth,” those customer contact points where the tourist experience spells a huge difference between being satisfied and not at all. Under the Tourism Act of 2009, the Department of Tourism manages 13 operating units and 8 attached agencies and corporations (see Organization of the Department).

Twenty-one direct-report groups and not one can fix the errors of the country’s customer-tourist experience?

Hire a Customer Champion, Not Another Politician

If the Department of Tourism were a large enterprise conglomerate and considered all its potential tourists in the world as its customer, everyone in the department will begin their customer care campaign by understanding and knowing the needs of the client first before any recruitment and hiring, infrastructure installation, hardware and software implementation, process flow execution, quality assurance and control monitoring, and a host of other functioning groups and activities that support their one, new mission: providing the best customer care to the client. Brick and mortar, and wonderfully-made products and services don’t matter without the customer loving everything about the experience.

The products and services of the department may be varied but it must operate like a customer contact division that provides both onsite and offsite services, from traditional over-the-counter transactions to telephone-based help desk support and online means including social media. Its stores are the airports, embassy offices, tourist kiosks, tourist service desk, and many more. It sells the ultimate travel experience like it owned Thomas Cook, the 100-year-old iconic travel agency group which began creating chartered excursions and unique vacation packages. A clear understanding what the customer wants is the key factor to succeeding and transforming the Philippines into a great tourist destination, and not because of only one famous beach, but for its entirety. The experience need not be flawless at the start but constant and consistent upgrades should be part of the job.

The department has to undergo a rash, brash and immediate reeducation of its priorities; it is not about the airport nor is it the slogans and nice videos espousing how beautiful the country is. It is and has always been focused on the customer. “The Customer is King!” “The Customer is Always Right!” “A Complaint is a Gift!” “Customer First!” This is how the tourism champions should think about their jobs. The rest – people, place and process, notwithstanding the product – will fall into place once everyone in the department understands their new mission in life. Think Steve Jobs, his tunnel vision and his consistency of doing things since his garage days. Think Jan Carlzon and his book Moments of Truth, his story when he was president of Scandinavian Airlines wherein he turned the lackluster, state-run airline into a profitable business that won the rave of customers, worldwide. A “Moment of truth” is the notion that a service company’s overall performance is the sum of countless interactions between customers and employees, the so-called moments of truth that either help to retain a customer or send him to the competition.

Stop Policing and Controlling!

The Philippines has always been a controlling type of culture, fixing things by instituting more policing and control rather than getting into the real problem and implementing solutions geared towards lesser problem escalation, more on-the-spot decision-making to help the customer, a knowledgebase of recurring inquiries and problems, customer surprise, and so on. For example, my corporate mentor and Canadian-born John Novosad used to wonder why there was always three people inside the cashier’s booth of a typical store, and finding out later on that one’s for cashiering (the obvious function of the cashier’s booth), another checks what the cashier punched into the cash register versus the actual products, and the last person does the work of the second person (again) before bagging the items and stapling the plastic bag ten times (just to make sure it’s difficult to shoplift). Policing and controlling has never been part of the customer experience – it’s an extreme activity more focused on catching thieves and crooks than it is to serve the customer. It never motivates the frontline customer representatives to do their darn best, knowing they’re being watched behind their backs. Too much cost is being implemented in these two disadvantageous facets of managing the customer experience which could have just been given back to the customer. The mindset of serving the tourist as a VIP customer in the Philippines has to be re-engineered.

Get the Contact Center Industry Involved!

There are a lot of competent men and women in the contact center industry, the fastest-rising industry in the Philippines today, that can help lead, manage and assist the department tasked to correctly sell the country as a premier tourist destination and (then) service these customers at every contact point and customer interaction – every moment of truth – in the entire customer experience. Even the entry-level customer service rep or agent in a typical contact center can tell you how to best serve the customer needs of the tourist visiting the Philippines for the first time. Why? Because they’ve been doing a similar job every day, talking to 50 or hundreds of customers each day, their blood flowing with “The Customer is King!” slogans, philosophies, principles, guidelines, processes and ethics. Many of them live and breath “Customer First!”

One battle-cry I’ve always harped on many of the things I’ve done in my professional life is “To make it very easy for the customer,” a statement that first began with my involvement in customer service led by another corporate mentor, Tonet Rivera, in a direct selling company. The first is “very easy to start” where the customer experience of enlisting tourists to visit the country begins; “very easy to stay” means every moment of truth once they set their foot on Philippine soil; “very easy to earn or gain” doesn’t mean earning money but gaining a wealth of knowledge and understanding about the Philippines, and wanting to come back for more of that experience.

Last Word

I am but a small voice in the concern for making the customer experience of the tourists we are luring to visit the Philippines. We all need to pitch our ideas to P’Noy, the CEO of Philippine government and the person who can start the customer experience revolution in Philippine tourism. Going to and collaborating with the contact center industry segment of the country as a single source of knowledge and professional competency is just one solution. There is a wealth of more ideas that can continue to pour into the national government so it can decide how to attack the problem. Whereas the country was once bestowed the label “Pearl of the Orient Seas,” the country can win back that pride if only it concentrated and focused on the customer’s experience, those moments of truth that make or break tourism, and ingesting “The Customer is King!” Cool Aid that’s consistent with how tourists have usually come to describe the Filipino: always smiling, passionate, resilient, lovers of food, life, romance and festivities, musically inclined, and religious, to name a few positive traits.

“The Tourist is King!” As simple as that.

Title Photo from the Department of Tourism

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Back in 2002, I used to work for Atlantic Tele-Center (ATC), a call center company with operations in Miami, Florida, Guyana in South America and St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. ATC was owned by the U.S. telecommunications company Atlantic Tele-Network, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATNI) headquartered at St. Thomas. VoiceLog, the largest third-party verification company at that time, was one of its clients and I headed the team that set up, managed and maintained ATC’s call center software in the cloud, then called Application Service Provider (ASP), for VoiceLog. This way, their at-home agents and supervisors (home-based workforce) could access the software by way of each one’s home DSL connection and home phone. Besides managing technology for VoiceLog (IT folks call this managed service), we also provided 24×7 technical support to the entire at-home workforce, especially when at-home agent profiles were locked because of unanswered customer calls.

During a time when unified messaging was not available, support was also provided by chat through AOL’s instant messaging service. Supervisors would IM my team about VoiceLog agents who couldn’t receive calls or connect to the cloud-based software, and so on. Overall, the year-long project worked well and only minor issues ensued.

Fast track to today and Filipinos ask themselves why is it that almost a decade ago, at-home agent operations works well in the U.S. and it doesn’t seem to get a good head start in the Philippines. Despite the Filipino’s dominance in the call center world, with its advantages in American linguistics and culture (“as American as apple pie”), shouldn’t it follow that the country already began employing at-home agents a few years back? Or even last year or this year?

I’m sure there are a few of them out there but the mass culture of at-home agents never really took off in the Philippines and call center companies, big or small, still continue to rent enclosed office spaces lined up with tens and hundreds of workstations wired to dozens of servers and integrated into its global private network.

Let me describe five major factors that should seriously be considered to make the at-home agent program work for any type of business in the Philippines (not just call center companies), and how to implement each of these on a practical standpoint.

1. CONNECTIVITY

Though home DSL connection in the Philippines have improved that past decade, it is still not at par to provide the best quality VOIP service that large call centers want it to. It’s not speed that’s important – it’s uninterrupted connectivity between the home computer and the cloud-based servers. A majority of home DSL users surf the web, access e-mail, use Facebook or Google, but hardly run VOIP programs like Skype or Google Talk. This means only (browser) data is being fetched and sent between the home computer and the web servers their browsers try to access, not voice (data packets). The old stand-alone computer days of using Cyclic Redundancy Checks (CRC) is similarly being used when you surf the net – if your web browser cannot connect to the web servers, your browser will retry connectivity several times until it successfully connects. Some web programs like YouTube also buffer data to provide a near-to-seamless view of their videos. This is not the case with VOIP. VOIP cannot live with these packets of interruptions that are called “timeouts.” VOIP needs uninterrupted connectivity.

Photo by kirklau at Flickr.com

After having used most DSL and cable internet providers in the Philippines, including the wireless ones, I’ve stuck it out with Globe Telecom’s DSL because it has the least amount of timeouts during an extended duration of use. Globe’s DSL may not have the best burst of download speed but it sure beats all others with the least amount of timeouts in my locations – Makati and Taguig.

How Do You Do It: Your business must conduct connectivity tests between your at-home agent’s home computer and your service provider’s cloud-based VOIP servers. “Ping tests” are the usual first-level tests. More comprehensive tests may include measuring Jitter, QoS (quality of service), MOS (mean opinion score) and packet loss that assess VOIP quality (I always use MyVOIPSpeed test by VisualWare). The connectivity test has to be done several times, at certain points of the day, to get a better overview of your at-home agent’s home DSL connection. Never assume that your at-home agent’s home DSL connectivity is workable even if they are subscribed to Globe’s DSL; telecommunications companies in the Philippines have different degrees of connectivity that depends on location. Other internet providers actually do better than Globe at other localities.

2. VOIP SOLUTION

There were several small call centers averaging 5 to 10 seats that started using the MagicJack system during the time when the maker of that device did not limit the number of calls per day. However, after testing this solution, I found out that it hogged as much as 250 kbps during a call. That’s a problem for your at-home agent’s home DSL connection because even if they lease a 1 Mbps subscription (that’s the maximum download burst speed, not a steady stream), all home DSL providers’ 1 Mbps subscription plan only allow a maximum upload burst of 250 kbps (or one-fourth of the download speed). Maximum isn’t always available. Thus, there will be moments of poor quality of the conversation leading to timeouts.

Photo by avaya at Flickr.com

Hosted solutions (also known as SaaS) being offered today mean that all the expensive servers and its operating systems and application software required to run your customer sales, marketing, service and support operations are owned by a third-party provider and leases (or rents) resource time to you and your at-home agents on preset terms, i.e. monthly subscription. What you and your at-home agents just need to have is a computer running a web browser like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox where you enter the web address or URL of the hosted solution and do your thing. There are simple PBX hosted solutions and more complex hosted call center solutions out there, sometimes called cloud-based software or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

How Do You Do It: You have to make sure that the hosted IP-PBX or VOIP solution your at-home agents will be using should not exceed 100 kbps both ways. Otherwise, it will be difficult to realize good voice quality during customer contact, just like the MagicJack example above. Remember, besides the VOIP bandwidth requirement, your IP-PBX, VOIP or hosted call center solution will also need to refresh your at-home agent’s screen, meaning additional bandwidth. Therefore, you must conduct voice tests through live test calls between your at-home agent’s home computer and the origination or termination points, i.e. calls originating or terminating in the United States, before you allow your at-home agent to accept or place live calls.

3. CULTURE

It’s not about discipline but more of the culture of the Filipino. It takes some time for a typical Filipino family to understand the difference between work and play, or the work-at-home mind-set. Doing work at home has always been somewhat of a taboo because family members see the humble abode as it is – a place to relax, get together with family members, and do things that are seen as personal and comfortable. Thus, conducting uninterrupted, continuous hours of work at home is not impossible but a challenge.

A well established, multinational call center company in the Philippines tried the at-home agent method and failed because the inborn Filipino culture and value system treated the home as a family’s turf. For example, when the at-home agent’s spouse demands their time, the former can’t negate that exact moment no matter how trivial it is, lest he or she allows that little issue to balloon into a marital World War III. It may take some time for the spouse and the other family members to form the habit of not disturbing the first-time at-home agent.

Photo by at ikaw_ay_pinoy Flickr.com

Another negative impact is ambient noise. A huge majority of would-be at-home agents do not live in posh, gated villages where the constant noise of pedestrian and vehicular traffic are almost non-existent. Lucky you if the at-home agent lives outside the city and in a place where the only background noise would be birds chirping. Many Filipinos do not have a sound-proof room in their house unless they so desire to build one specifically for this type of job. It would be one for the record books to hear a customer to ask the at-home agent, “What was that noise?” and we could only imagine the comical answer coming from your at-home agent, “Oh, that was a five-passenger motorcycle passing by.”

How Do You Do It: Always ask your at-home agent applicant to describe his or her workplace inside the house, specific to the details of construction materials used for the room including a rough-draft floor plan of the house, a vicinity map and where public transportation ply about, the volume of pedestrians passing by, animals living inside and near the home, and many more items you should consider before hiring the at-home agent. If you have a Sound Level Meter at hand, ask the at-home agent applicant to bring it home. Then, there’s also the interview about family members living at home, their routine and schedules, babies to tend to, kids to take care of after school, sleeping hours, and so on. In summary, you need to know the exact living and working conditions, and lifestyle habits of your at-home agent applicant down to the nitty-gritty detail so you know what to expect.

4. AGE

I mentioned previously of the well-established, multinational call center company in the Philippines experimenting with an at-home agent program and failing on it. Even before the year ended, they folded the project and absorbed some of the agents into their office-like centers. Some of the reasons for the failure were the factors I mentioned above. However, the other major factor was  maturity, or the lack of it. But it is difficult to measure maturity and so, the better way to categorize this section is to use “age” when recruiting at-home agents.

Statistically (based on the 2008 Philippine Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report by CallCentres.net), about 80% of the call center agent workforce in the Philippines belongs to the 18-34 years old age bracket where almost half are ages 18 to 24. Another related fact about the industry is that 60% of its employed population is female. In a closed office environment where team leaders, supervisors, managers and senior executives are physically near the agents, on-demand supervision is the norm and productivity can be managed on the spot. But at home, there are no supervisors or managers. The at-home agent is on his or her own to manage their productivity and discipline to the best of their ability. This requires maturity, and maturity generally grows as one ages.

How Do You Do It: Though it may seem discriminating to do so, it is reasonable that your best bet for hiring at-home agents should generally be no younger than 35 years old. Also, the female psyche of maturity still holds more weight because this gender group can do better in multitasking than its equivalent. Multitasking is necessary in a home environment and women are genetically good at juggling every activity at home, being born homemakers, generally speaking. A married spouse with no full-time job that’s about 40-50 years old (life begins at 40, eh?) will probably be a better at-home agent, especially if her kids are already in high school, attending college or university or best, in the daily grind of a job. True, there is always an exception to the rule. So, always use your good judgment and sound interview techniques to find out if a younger at-home agent applicant possesses the required maturity and at-home multitasking skils you so desire.

5. THE REST OF THE SKILLS

I’m not going to go through the other work-related, project-specific skills you need for your sales, marketing, service and support campaign, be it in a captive or outsourced corporate environment. You may be thinking of hiring at-home agents to conduct Philippine local calls, not necessarily in an outsourced situation where your agents receive calls from U.S. customers. “The rest of the skills” mean the ability of your at-home agent to express and communicate properly, common sense, technical skills, and so on. That’s up to you.

Photo by kingratt82 at Flickr.com

IN SUMMARY

So, the at-home agent idea can actually work in the Philippines (and probably other Asian or developing nation) if all these five factors are seriously considered and even enhanced. This makes work more available to the Filipino homemaker whose responsibilities have now been diminished – kids all working or married, spouse is still a workaholic and wouldn’t think of retiring, too tiring to get a part-time field sales job, and other things that makes your work-at-home program more appealing than anything else.

However, these are not surefire ways of successfully implementing an at-home agent operation. Motivation, skills training, professional development and a bigger sense of understanding about the at-home agent work have to come from you, and how to go about conducting these activities is another thing worthwhile to consider. So, don’t quote me as saying, “Hey! Raffy said this and that.” Based on my experience, knowledge and practical intuition, I listed these few, major items that need to be addressed before attempting to employ an at-home agent program. But if you become successful, do let me know so we can inform the entire country that truly the at-home agent program can work in the Philippines using “Your Way!”

Photo by forexsoftware at Flickr.com

NOTE: This blog also appears at the inContact Blog.

Is 2011 the year where US companies realize its failures in outsourcing call center operations to offshore sites? A TheStreet article announcing Delta’s (airlines) plan to shut down its call center in Montago Bay, Jamaica, is just one of the bad news circling around. In 2009, Delta also closed a reservations call center in India, stating that “customer acceptance” of outsourced, offshore call centers are low. In addition, TheStreet also reported that US Airways will close a passenger call center in the Philippines later this year.

Many companies in the developed world joined the fray of outsourcing parts of their operations to Third World countries like India and the Philippines primarily because of cheap labor, much as decades-ago manufacturing firms have done so. However, this often results in low quality of workmanship because there is not a lot of thought placed with this “blatant outsourcing” before moving parts of a company’s operations abroad. Boardroom decisions usually only look at the pennies saved without much thought placed in operational challenges to make it work. Hence, failures result in bad press and publicity for both the outsourced country and the US industry that the corporation esteems itself to be part of.

Correct use of technology, hiring the right people and establishing optimal processes are the three basic rules for successfully outsourcing a company’s operations elsewhere. Though a premise-based solution is often implemented, the problem with this model lies in dealing with several points of command, control and information between all parties involved – end users, software vendors, telecommunications providers, and managed networks, to name a few. Thus, a solution where every point of contact uses the cloud is something a business must start taking advantage of. Therein lies cloud-based providers like Kunnect, a perfect conduit for outsourcing because not only does it provide the best-in-class SaaS call center technology and employs hundreds of people with decades of expertise in the industry, it also has access to thousands of seats with hundreds of its clients, many of which are outsourcers within the United States and in countries like the Philippines. This immediate access to technology, people and process from one entity gives businesses the optimal leverage to move operations outside its location but correctly manage and monitor it using the cloud and employing tried-and-tested resources that  they can deliver. With its overseas offices in APAC and EMEA (Asia and Europe), US businesses can now rely on the perfect SaaS technology, the best expert advise to create workable processes, and access to thousands of qualified and skilled human resources from its 750+ clients at favorable rates.

Call Center Outsourcing 2.0 defines a new way to help US businesses face its challenges of fiscal growth by leveraging the best, hassle-free, single point of outsourcing contract for SaaS-based call center technology, people and process. In this all-in-one model, it’s apparent that these providers stick out to be best, ready-to-deliver service provider in the call center space.

Photo of WorldLink88 call center I managed

Many people have asked me for advise on setting up and operating a small business call center. That’s been my niche – always the small business advocate even with call centers. The industry has many descriptions of how many seats a small call center has to have. In my personal opinion based on experience, small means no greater than 100 seats. It’s a number that’s easy to manage even by yourself. Beyond that, I call it mid-sized all the way up to 999 seats where you now start setting up a more formal management team.

From the various informal Q&A sessions I’ve conducted over the past years, I decided to write down some of them in short snippets as my young and agile mind could recall.

Q: How much does it take to set up a call center?

This is always the first question asked when I’m with a group of entrepreneurs interested in operating a call center. There are two ways of setting up a small business call center: (1) buy, build and operate, and (2) lease everything and operate. The major difference is the amount of money you need to shell out. It’s like buying a house to live in and furnishing it with the fixtures you like; or renting one fully-furnished and making-do with what you have. So, if you have the cash to stay in business for more than year despite the usual income cycles of a startup business, then go for the “build and operate” model; this way, you spread your ROI which doesn’t force you to generate a high revenue. However, if you are not 100 percent sure of being in business for more than year, lease as much as everything you can. You can plan to move out in a year’s time to your newly built call center after accumulating enough cash from your income.

The frugal set up cost is about $1,500 per seat (or workstation), inclusive of every machine, furniture, fixture, painting, construction, etc. It costs more if you decide to use expensive but aesthetically good-looking materials. For leasing, expect to spend about $200 per seat, per month, but this not only includes everything you need to set up a seat but also operating expenses like rent and all utilities.

Q: How many seats should I set up or begin with?

Many people think that starting small and building or getting more seats later on is the ideal way to operate a call center. In fact, the magic number I’ve heard is five seats. This is actually unproductive and may pin down your hopes of growing in the long run. Many foreign clients want to outsource part of their business operations with no less than 10 seats. If you only had 5 or 10 seats, how would you determine if a new, prospective client’s program or campaign is better than the one you’re currently running? However, if you had 20 seats and was looking into a new campaign that required an initial requirement of 10 seats, you could test the new campaign with, say, 3 or 5 seats for a few days or a week to see if it fits the skill-set of your workforce and your revenue projections; and you can do this without any major effect on your existing client’s campaign. After a week, if the new campaign proves to be a whole lot better than the existing one, you’ve got a great problem: which do you choose? That scenario differs a lot if you only had 5 seats. With that little, it won’t make you grow – you might just get stuck where you are because you have no room to test and in effect grow your income stream to build or lease more seats.

The other opportunity when having the capacity to add more seats that in about 2 or 3 years time you’ve accumulated hundreds of seats performing beautifully, there’s a bigger chance for a foreign player to buy you out at a substantial amount. Many mid-sized call centers have been bought out in the past not only because of the operating size but the skill-set of the workforce and the types of campaigns and clients you maintain fit well into the foreign buyer’s business model.

Q: What kind of program or campaign should I get?

Most small business call centers run performance-based telemarketing campaigns. Though people always think that fixed-income, inbound-oriented campaigns like customer service and technical support are better, the reality is you have a better chance of making more money in performance-based campaigns. What people don’t realize is that inbound-oriented campaigns have more metrics that the call center must achieve; if you don’t hit your client’s metrics, you actually don’t get paid for those failures. Therefore, inbound-oriented campaigns are also performance-based. The major difference with inbound-orietned campaigns is you don’t get more money if you do better than the metrics. For telemarketing-oriented campaigns, the more you perform (i.e. selling a product), the more you earn. Whether the campaigns are easy lead generation or a full cycle, cold-calling up to closing the sale type, managing a call center that’s running sales-oriented campaigns is akin to operating a direct selling agency or group – it’s fun, involves lots of cheerleading and sales activities, employee tenure is based on pure numbers (no subjective evaluations required), and so on. And ordinary business-people and entrepreneurs understand selling a whole lot better than the intracies of inbound campaigns (what the heck is an AHT?)

Q: Where do I get campaigns?

One of your roles as a small business call center owner, delegated or done by yourself, is to keep looking for campaigns even if you’re happy running the current one – on a daily basis. Call center clients and campaigns come and go, much like any kind of business client who will favor you today but not for eternity. You have to be ready for that inevitable time when your client suddenly bolts out for varying good or bad reasons. So, business development is an ongoing, 54-week job for you; and the internet is aswarm with brokers and direct clients always looking for the right call centers to run their campaigns. A huge number of them cater to the outbound-base, sales-oriented campaigns.

When you find a prospect in the internet, establish the initial e-mail correspondence but find a way to talk to each other. Don’t e-mail each other to death. Verbal communication is always a great way of getting your gut to tell you “This is great!” or “Something’s wrong here.” You can find prospective clients and brokers in social networks like LinkedIn and its many industry-related groups, Yahoo! Groups, Google-ing specific clients and making the pitch, and so on. Like a good salesperson, ask your happy clients if they can refer you to their peers without sounding like it’s going to affect your current business relationship with them. Also market the past campaign experiences of your workforce even if they’re newly hired – these kinds of information give you tremendous weight in the type of campaigns you can get your hands on. For past and current clients, ask their permission to post their company names, logos and short testimonials on your website (yes, you definitely need one.) Alliances such as technology providers are also a good public relations items to post in your website, i.e. Dell for your computers, Cisco for your network, Microsoft for your O/S, etc. Whatever it takes to build credibility as immediate as possible for your startup call center.

Q: How do I recruit good people for my startup call center?

The fastest way to recruit is by advertising in the dailies but that’s way too expensive to do for a small business call center. Online job boards like Jobstreet.com and JobsDB.com provide less expensive ways (the last I paid for Jobstreet.com’s service was 5,000 Pesos per position). However, one online place I go to to recruit experienced agents, team leaders and supervisors is Friendster.com, not Facebook.com. Friendster.com allows me to search specific call center companies written in user profiles and message each of these people invidivually using Friendster.com’s messaging system. However, before you attempt to do this, make sure you complete your Friendster.com profile as expansive and detailed as possible because your recruits will first look at your Friendster.com profile before they answer you back. Don’t recruit blindly – place your full name, company name, full addrress, landline and mobile phone numbers, and e-mail address (for the latter, get a company domain name – only costs $11/year at GoDaddy.com and getting GMail to host your @domain.com e-mail account is free). There are hardly any agent in LinkedIn.com and way too many managers and expats who you don’t need for a small business call center. Facebook.com isn’t recruitment-friendly. Some Yahoo! Groups where call center agents congregate can also help you recruit good people.

Q: How much should I pay my new recruits?

I’ve managed telemarketing-oriented call centers and here’s my commonsense answer to this question. For me, the reason I pay someone a basic salary is for that person to hit his or her quota or functional objectives. Anything beyond that is commissionable, so to say. Now, remember that the Filipino culture has always been employee-oriented and fixed-income salary-based. So, the higher the basic pay, the more enticing you are to them. Match your breakeven levels and margins to the basic pay of your workforce. For example, if a basic pay of 13,000 Pesos equates to $30 per day, per seat, a breakeven level that includes everything from leases and amortization, up to the salaries of your supervisors and manager, add no less than 50% margin or $45 per day, per seat, that’s not bad considering that many telemarketing campaigns pay a lot more commissions than $45 on a per sale basis of their products and services. Your agents might think P 13,000 is low but the amount of sales they need to generate is also pretty low. Then, incentivize their pay with commissions beyond their quota. I usually reserve no less than 25% of margins above my $45 mark for workforce commissions; giving more becomes enticing for them. If you can show them exactly what you’re talking about on paper during the final interview of your selected few, I’m pretty sure you’ll be a great call center to work with. The bottom-line is not to be greedy and your workforce will reward you for doing so.

Now, if your call center is in the boondocks far away from the nearest 711 convenience store and accessible public transportation, you have to increase your basic pay to entice experienced people to come join you despite the location. To arrive at how much should higher pay be, go back to the equation above and determine your breakeven level, margins and the rest of the projections.

Q: Should I set up beside existing call centers or somewhere where I am the only call center in that area?

There are two things you need to consider when choosing your location: (1) available internet bandwidth, and (2) access to experienced people. For the second part, I think I’ve answered the solution to that if you are locating yourself away from major thoroughfares of public transportation (see “How much should I pay my new recruits?”) In addition, I made sure to write “experienced” because you will not have the time, money and patience to teach newbies how to sell. For the first consideration, you need to make sure that your internet service provider (ISP) in that area can bring you to the internet cloud in the smallest amount of hops as possible and in the most stable way it can. Try testing your ISP’s connectivity by using SpeedTest.net and connecting to a server in Los Angeles. If you have access to a VisualRoute software or a similar solution, the better for you to determine everything you need for your voice-oriented internet connectivity. Lastly, it’s inevitable that you provide the expected basic amenities of a call center office: unlimited hot and cold drinking water, microwave oven, a place to wash and store their eating utensils, clean restrooms, bright lighting, comfortable workstations, and a host of many minor things that make a difference.

So, location is dependent on internet access and access to experienced employees. Everything else is replaceable with something similar.

Q: What kind of technology should I get?

Technology here means the kind of tools your workforce will be using when calling or receiving calls. It is what makes your entire call center productive or otherwise. It only means that besides the skills of your workforce and the nice campaigns you’re able to get, technology is the third important piece of the trilogy of major factors that will make or break your small business call center.

Here’s where I become biased. I’ve experienced hands-on installation, implementation and operation of enterprise call center solutions, those that physically resides inside your call center network (also called “premise-based),” and I’ve used hosted call center solutions or technologies that are not residing inside your network but are accessible through the web. For a startup small business call center, I recommend going for the hosted solution because it is subscription-based – you lease the service rather than having to buy the software (which is usually expensive) and the required server-hardware (also expensive) plus the telecommunications costs of calling landline and mobile phones in the country to which you are subcontracted to call. As you work your way up to the comfort level of the day-to-day grind of call center operations, you begin to realize what it takes to make it successful and falling in love with what you do – or not. Leasing is an easy get-away solution just in case your call center operations withers away due to many reasons. Buying software and hardware is like buying a car – only after a few months, the purchase price depreciates plus the next buyer has to acquire the same maintenance agreement with the software and hardware providers you bought them from without any discounts.

Between the few players I’ve encountered in the market like Five-9, Drishti, Touchstar and many others, I’ve found Kunnect to be the most cost-effective solution that gives me about 80% to 90% of what I want (and need). Kunnect is also very user-friendly, meaning I didn’t have to hire expensive IT experts or engineers to manage it (like VicciDial and other Linux-based systems which are usually free but takes several IT people to manage it; and you can’t afford these people to be late or absent – so, you hire more as idle backup). It takes a 3-hour remote training session to learn administration and 5-minutes for the agents to understand it. With Kunnect, I was able to hire home-based Quality Assurance (QA) analysts; that’s less seats to pay for. I didn’t need a report analyst to generate half-day, end-of-day, end-of-week (and so on) reports I’m required to submit to my clients. Because Kunnect was simple to use, I sat down with my team leaders and supervisors for an hour and taught them how to manage the dialer and create the Excel-based client reports on a daily basis. If I was sick at home or vacationing in Boracay, all I need is internet access to monitor the call center, because it’s web-based. I can go on and on – the point is, it fit my bill. After 3 years of using it, Kunnect offered me to represent them in the Philippines and Asia. I accepted only because I knew how effective it was for a small business call center, I knew how to use it (even knew the shortcuts on an operational standpoint) and I just loved their solution. So, there – that’s why I wrote “Here’s where I become biased.”

If you have any further questions related to this post, please go to my Contact Page to write down your thoughts and I will try to answer it as soon as I can.

Photo by kitoy at Flickr.com

With the proclamation of the next President of the Republic of the Philippines still a month or less away, it’s time to take a look at the campaign pronouncements of Benigno “Noynoy” S. Aquino III as it affects the industry that has continued to provide a constant stream of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) and immediate jobs to our young employees – the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), specifically the Call Center segment.

Here is an excerpt from Noynoy’s official webpage, Noynoy.ph:

“My central concern is the welfare of my people. They need jobs. Our manufacturing industry has withered away. The toothpaste and shampoo we use is even imported from Thailand!”

“So what are our options? BPO and tourism are critical growth areas. Take a look at Leyte and Samar. The hotels aren’t as good as they should be and the infrastructure is poor.”

Though no details have been yet specified, Noynoy clearly identified the BPO industry as a key business sector which his future administration will be looking into as a continuing source of jobs.

Noynoy also added some intended policy plans, as reported by ABS-CBN, when he is elected as President.

“Streamline fiscal incentives offered to investors, such as tax holidays, to bring in more revenues.”

Clearly, this is a good plan to pursue to increase the influx of FDIs into the country thus channeling more jobs including and besides call center jobs. However, there is disconnect on the skills and competencies of our human resources to the types of investors Noynoy plans to woo. Also, Noynoy should include Filipino entrepreneurs in these incentives to give them a chance to compete with its foreign counterparts. Include migrant Filipinos (those who are residents of other countries) who may opt to set up a call center than invest on uninhabited condominiums and the like.

A headache that many foreign companies shrug as a “common business practice” in the country is bureaucracy and red tape. Noynoy states in the ABS-CBN report,

“Reduce red tape and simplify procedures in doing business.”

Though many of the national government agencies have been offering faster processing and web-based services, there are still a lot of improvements to be made to eliminate red tape and simplify government procedures as these affect local and foreign companies.

“Promote industries with the greatest potential for growth and where the Philippines has a competitive advantage, such as agribusiness, business process outsourcing, creative industries, infrastructure, manufacturing and logistics, socially responsible mining, and tourism and retirement.”

The BPO industry has proven itself to be a successful model for foreign investments and job creation. Though it partly falls into the many items of Noynoy’s “to do” list, I do hope he and his administration find ways to build upon its success and not just maintain the status quo. Regardless of the global recession that hit the United States and Europe, outsourcing continues to climb with other countries now vying for the same space as the Philippines started a decade ago.

“Form a group to review possible changes to economic provisions in the constitution.”

This is one of the most important legacies of Aquino’s mother during her term in office from 1986 to 1992 – Noynoy intends to replicate this in his first 100 days as president. On this matter, I think the organized groups representing the industry, particularly BPA/P (Business Processing Association of the Philippines) and the CCAP (Call Center Association of the Philippines) should spearhead the effort to create meaningful economic-oriented constitutional provisions that benefit the industry and the nation as a whole.

In a 2007 Inquirer interview, the interviewer espouses the observation that many college graduates have no choice but to work for the call centers that is outside the scope of what they studied and majored in. The interviewer asks Noynoy if he supports this kind of progression – graduates having no choice but to work as a call center agent. Noynoy responds,

“Well, at this point in time, when we have such a high unemployment rate, I don’t think we can really be choosy. Which indicates also, why with the mistakes we have, that we are not giving them any other opportunities.”

This makes Noynoy a realist regarding the magnitude of unemployment the country should have had if it were not for the job offers of the BPO industry, particularly the call center segment. National and local government units should begin to carry the banner of providing career growths and paths to everyone working inside the industry, including call center agents, on a more pragmatic means than just day-dreaming on (sometimes expensive) possibilities that doesn’t work. College graduates working in call centers are benefitted by developing the discipline of corporate life, obtaining the communications skills many lacked pre-BPO days, acquiring the tenacity of sales, marketing, service and support, learning the principles behind giving real service to a customer and understanding the opportunities to find themselves and their strengths while fixing their weaknesses. These are the inherent competencies worth mentioning that the industry builds on our college graduates and prepares them to embark on bigger things in their career.

“…so, there’s seems to be a discontinuity in our basic abilities; perhaps our education system, the value formation aspect, the opportunities, so that we can achieve the potentials, the fullest potentials of what is intrinsic in us.”

After the Marcos regime, the height of democracy led the country to disregard global standard and practices over assumed Filipino ideals, standards that once made the Philippines a business beacon of Asia in the 50′s, 60′s and the 70’s. However, who would have known that a good command of the English language would become a big requirement to a future industry that aided the country in alleviating its unemployment and fiscal requirements. Many colleges and universities, upon seeing the trend early on, began their own version of “English Only” policies and improved communication skills without the help of the local or national government. They already knew long before government came in to help that their future graduates had to be equipped with globally at-par skills so that at best they could easily enter the call center workforce if they couldn’t find work in their respective fields of expertise.

I hope the general policies that Noynoy laid out long before the 90-day electoral campaign period began will not change to the dictates of the people who supported him in effort and money. I encourage everyone in the BPO-call center industry to remind our upcoming President of his campaign promises to continue building and fostering the industry that gave life to the Philippines when it needed it most. I look forward to our industry pillars – BPA/P and CCAP – to assist our new President in proposing good changes in governance of the economic policies of government, both in law and in practice, so that these changes help the people working inside the industry and those that have always been supporting it since a decade ago.

I look forward that Noynoy personally gets involved in the BPO industry so that it can acquire more investments and create more jobs that warrant the creativity and personality of the Filipino people, that the masses can also join the ranks of the BPO corporate world, and that the public and private academic community is assisted in its continuing intent to provide its graduates the right skills regardless of industry.

With prayers, passion and commitment, this sunrise industry will continue to persuade foreign firms and local entrepreneurs to locate and invest in more centers in the country, provide more jobs and directly be involved in helping train and educate the masses to give them also a chance to work for this celebrated industry.

The CEO and COO of KUNNECT recently visited the Philippines to launch its call center technology solutions to the Philippine BPO market. Fred Cote, co-founder and CEO, spoke at the October 12 meeting of the members of the Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) in Shangri-La Hotel Makati. Mr. Cote presented KUNNECT as a viable, inexpensive call center solution for immediate operations without the need for costly and time-consuming setup, calling it the “best in its class” of a full suite of call center features and functionality. Together with Mr. Cote were Chris Persaud, COO of KUNNECT, and Raffy Pekson II, the Country Representative of KUNNECT in the Philippines.

In Mr. Cote’s talk, he presented two new subscription plans, specially created for the Philippines, at half-the-price rates: Plan 100 for $100 per month, per seat, with unlimited calls within North America at a 1-year commitment contract, and Plan 125 for $125 per month, per seat, unlimited calls and a 6-month commitment contract. KUNNECT has two regular monthly plans with no commitment contract (start and stop anytime): the Basic Plan of $50 per month, per seat, plus toll charges, and the Unlimited Plan of $199 per month, per seat, with unlimited calls within North America. “Someone has yet to beat our $100 plan.  We are setting a new standard.” adds Mr. Cote of KUNNECT’S web-based SAAS call center offering.

During their two-week stay in the Philippines, Messieurs Cote and Persaud personally presented KUNNECT and met with the management teams of several call centers, and also non-call center companies that want to set up small, internally-controlled call centers for their sales, marketing, service and support business requirements. Mr. Pekson said that some prospective clients remarked that the main enticing feature of KUNNECT’S offer, besides the price, is one’s ability to start immediately without the high setup and maintenance costs.

KUNNECT is a global Tier-2 class telecommunications carrier with offices in the U.S., Canada, France and Germany, and does about 6 billion calls a year through its network, according to Mr. Cote.  “The amazing thing about the Philippine’s business and commercial broadband internet service is that all the telecommunications companies in the country first land their internet pop in One Wilshire, Los Angeles, which is where KUNNECT is co-located.   This helps eliminate any downtime due to latency problems, as well as ensure the shortest possible route to a business.” (Latency is defined as the round-trip time it takes to access an IP address or a website, measured in milliseconds).

Aside from its popular hosted call center solution, KUNNECT also sells a premise-based, enterprise version for call centers that want to host their own solution. For details about KUNNECT’S solutions, get in touch with Raffy Pekson, KUNNECT’S Country Representative in Manila, at 501-3025 and 0927-726-9949, or e-mail him at raffy@kunnect.com. You can also visit their website at www.kunnect.ph for more information.

Are call center training schools really producing candidates for the various small or large call center companies around the country with inadequate skills for promotion? Is the Philippines creating a population akin to factory workers of decades ago hype? Is the call center industry in the verge of imploding because of the increasing cost of training only entry level people, driving the cost of outsourcing in the Philippines higher?

My personal answer to all three questions is yes – many call center agents enter the corporate world without the right skills to succumb not only the graveyard shift but to tackle organizational ponderings. These entry-level employees are just like the thousands of factory workers of the past that did robotic tasks day in, day out. Today, the call center agents are like parrots, mimicking scripts rather than understanding their work and their role. In fact, many call center agents do not even finish college because call center companies started accepting undergraduates years back. Teens and the Yuppies would rather get a paycheck than finish their studies. That’s a sad realization today. At least before, factory workers worked without achieving a college degree simply because they couldn’t afford to pay tuition.

But, let me throw a question that may change the entire call center education landscape. What if there is a technology that could allow training schools more courses to teach besides just the usual lessons on becoming a good call center agent? What if this technology can give colleges and universities the chance to create a call center degree, exactly what the computer revolution of the 60’s and 70’s created multitudes of degrees in computer science starting in the 70’s and the 80’s.

Today, there aren’t enough retirees from the call center industry to provide a big pool of professors capable of teaching the entire process cycle of call center operations. A few managers have resigned because of burn out and you don’t want those kinds of people teaching kids a future career with angst and complains. I believe technology may provide a means to create new and better coursewares beyond the norm of just training a Filipino to be a call center agent. If the schools were given access to a good call center technology, then it can creatively position their students to become graduating professionals capable of providing skills and knowhow beyond the existing entry-level training system and allow call center companies to easily integrate these new human resources into their organizations without having to spend too much on organizational development, post-agent skills and a lot of coaching and mentoring –  just to explain what kind of career the agent can have.

Call center agents of the past

So, rather than stick with the norm and continue producing factory workers for the call center industry, why not start creating call center professionals who will be prepared for a call center career? Not just a job but a real career in the call center. When these new graduates enter the call center company, they already know how it operates because they were taught several hands-on courses on each of the job position in a typical call center organization. Everyone can teach theory but if there is no practical approach to experience the real world, it may not correctly benefit the students. For someone educated in this new way, they may now know exactly what kind of role they want to pursue after being hired as an agent. A few may have decided that in 5 or 10 years from now, they want to manage a specific kind of department. Isn’t this better than exerting a mountain of effort in developing a neophyte call center employee who’s education had nothing to do with the other aspects of the call center organization? Won’t it benefit the companies to lower their cost of training and organizational development because agents already have a general idea and basic hands-on skill to handle other kinds of work past their entry-level agent job?

If you are managing a training institution or a school department that currently provides short courses on how to be a call center agent, and are interested in this technology that can allow you to produce better graduates, contact me and let’s talk about what this technology can do for you and your school.

If you are managing a college or university that’s thinking of incorporating call center courses but do not know how to start it off or what to offer, contact me and let’s talk about how this technology can create a new kind of educational offering to the public.

If you are an entrepreneur geared towards setting up an academic institution but have no idea what kind of call center courses you’d like to offer or begin with, contact me and let’s talk about this technology that can spur your creativity to begin something others have not yet even thought about.

My foreign principals have agreed to provide the academic establishment of the Philippines “FREE” use of their call center solution. This “Corporate Social Responsibility” is not being offered elsewhere – they have agreed to spin it off “first” in the Philippines. The corporate entity is not a fly-by-night organization but a robust and financially stable North American company whose management team are very familiar with the Philippines. Some of them been in the country several times in the past marketing and supporting other call center solutions. This is not like a Microsoft deal where schools are given huge discounts – it is free without any fine print attached to it. The only thing they ask is that schools will use it for call center training to benefit the academic community and the call center industry in the Philippines.

Please note that I am a “Country Representative” of the North American technology company, which means they have no physical and corporate presence in the Philippines other than myself as their sole representative. So, if you ask for my time to meet with you and present the matter of this free technology, I can do so at my availability and convenient location. Rest assured my intention and that of my principals is to propel the Philippines beyond today’s factory worker training style of call center agents and make the country the best location for call center outsourcing in the region, if not the world. To do this, it has to begin with real education. That’s where you come in. That’s your role. So, let’s help each other.

Maybe, your management team is seriously contemplating setting up a business center – an internal call center – to spearhead a full-blown marketing campaign aimed to destroy competition and capture your market once and for all?

Are you a managing director of a small or mid-sized center looking for a better way of doing things so that the speed of executing a client’s campaign is less than a day and the resulting issues will completely vanish?

Could you be the CFO or the business development head of a “larger than mid-size” call center seeking a solution to accept more campaigns without incurring a large cost of expanding your technology infrastructure?

How about the COO of a large, multinational call center who need a standby call center solution that’s capable of the entire suite of features and functions of your existing system, as part of a “Disaster Recovery” plan?

In any business like the call center business, there are three basic things people like yourself look for:

* Solutions to existing problems or issues;
* Solutions to bring the cost of doing business down some more;
* Solutions to create new businesses.

Here’s my standing offer: just give me thirty minutes of your time to find out if my solution is the solution you’re looking for. I guarantee you that in 5 minutes, you’ll know whether I should continue or not, and just let us enjoy our cups of coffee while it’s still hot. It’s not an inconvenience, not a hassle to accommodate me, not a big preparation like it was a wedding event, not much people needed to harness the message to my story. A small, simple “meet and greet” that can turn out to be a social encounter or the solution you’ve been looking for.

Like many consumer products, there’s always a “look and see” or test phase so that all theoretical analogies aside, will this solution really work on my kind of live operations? I’ll make sure you have that if you need it.

There are only two guarantees I can give you about my solution

1. It’s a robust and redundant full customer contact solution using the best technology available, and

2. It’s back by a global Tier-2 class carrier doing 350 million minutes a month or 6 billion calls a year.

Contact me today and I’ll make the time for you.