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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The tag line BDO uses is “Don’t Just Save, Invest.” If you read my previous blog about personal finance, you’ll notice that some paragraphs bear a similar message. That’s because the interest rate for an ordinary savings account has already gone down so much it might even be better to just keep those bills and coins inside a bamboo stalk instead of driving all the way to your bank to deposit or withdraw.

BDO Trust Launches the BDO Easy Investment Plan

The minimum investment scheme for the BDO Easy Investment Plan (EIP) is 1,000 Pesos per month contribution at a minimum frequency of once a month. For a minimum wage earner fresh out of college, it’s something to consider doing than spending it all on the latest gadget. Heck! If not for yourself, do it for your your future love-interest and your half-dozen kids! Obviously, the more you contribute, the more you earn. The frequency of contribution is either once or twice a month. Of course, you have to open a BDO account where the bank debits the specified amount and transfer that into your EIP. Once your contributions reach 10,000 Pesos, this amount will be spun off and be treated as a regular Unit Investment Trust Fund (UITF) of BDO, documented by a Confirmation of Participation (COP). Each UITF is established, administered and maintained in accordance with a written trust agreement or “plan” drawn by the trust entity (that’s you), approved by BDO’s Board of Directors, and finally approved by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP or Central Bank of the Philippines). This cycle of spinning off 10,000 Peso increments continue for as long as you are enrolled in the EIP program.

Where will your contributions be spun off? There are three ways of to invest in BDO’s EIP program, sequentially arranged according to the risk (low, medium and high) of the trust fund:

1. Peso Fixed Income Fund
2. Peso Balanced Fund
3. Equity Fund

Peso Fixed Income Fund

This type of savings provides a fixed income on your investment, in a combination of short to long-term fixed income securities. Simply put, the returns on your investment come in the form of fixed periodic payments and the eventual return of principal at maturity, or in this case when you decide to pull out everything, including the principal amount. Unlike a variable-income security, where payments change based on some underlying measure such as short-term interest rates, the payments of a fixed-income security are known in advance.

An example of a fixed-income security would be a 5 percent fixed-rate government bond where a 10,000 Peso investment would result in an annual 500 Peso payment until maturity when you would receive the 10,000 Peso back. Generally, this type of trust fund offers a lower return on investment because they guarantee income.

Peso Balanced Fund

Some people would call this a hybrid fund because it combines a stock component, a bond component and, sometimes, a money market component, in a single portfolio. BDO describes their Peso Balanced Fund as a fund to be invested in equities and, to some extent, fixed income securities, where the allocation shall be determined by the Trustee depending on market conditions. This fund reflects either a moderate (higher equity component) or conservative (higher fixed-income component) orientation.

A balanced fund is geared toward investors who are looking for a mixture of safety, income and modest capital appreciation. The amounts that such a BDO Trustee invests into each asset class usually must remain within a set minimum and maximum. Balanced fund portfolios do not materially change their asset mix.

Equity Fund

For risk-taking investors, an equity fund is the best way to invest your money especially at a younger age where the amount of time you have in your life is longer and, therefore, any ups and downs within that long period balances each other out. BDO aims to grow your equity fund over the medium to long-term by investing in a selection of exchange-listed equities. This is sometimes called a “stock fund.”

Equity funds are principally categorized according to company size, the investment style of the holdings in the portfolio and geography: size is determined by a company’s market capitalization, while the investment style, reflected in the fund’s stock holdings, is used to categorize equity mutual funds. It can target specific sectors like healthcare, commodities and real estate.

Choose the Type of EIP Fund That Fits Your Lifestyle

I’m not a finance guy, never did learn the ropes of the many financial instruments one can use to invest. That’s why I attend seminars like what Randell delivers. To simply the rule to use when investing your savings is to choose the type of risk you’d like to use. As I listed and described above the EIP plans from lowest to highest risk-taking, I think it’s best to put risk-taking in perspective. And to do that means how much time do you have before you’d like to start using or withdraw your investment:

The younger you are, the more time you have to take calculated risks.

Equity Funds run the risk of low and high yields as it puts your money in anticipation of producing high income on its investments. Of course, there is also the risk of bearing lower gains than the amount of money used to buy those equities. But if you began this fund in your younger years, and target to cash-out by your retirement age, the ups and downs of market fluctuations over the course of decades would have balanced out and yielding higher becomes a reality. Doing this by 50 years old and expecting to cash out by 55 is more like gambling; you’re better off in a low or medium-risk equity fund like Peso Fixed Income Fund and Peso Balanced Fund, respectively.

But, like I said, I’m not a financial whiz. This is my layman’s head speaking to you and how I understand the investment plans BDO has put out.

Is It the Perfect Opportunity?

In a nutshell, it is. For 1,000 Pesos a month, BDO is extending itself below the rich, wealthy and famous, ordinary folks like us who not-in-a-million-years would have imagined getting a fund manager like BDO and making our money earn more money.

Unlike private and government pension funds, and pre-need and insurance funds which can only be withdrawn or distributed only upon retirement, disability or death, BDO’s EIP can be used for a variety of your life’s needs like college education, family vacations, personal emergencies and retirement, to name a few.

Another thing is never having the time to learn and constantly monitor which financial instrument is best to juggle your money. Let the Trust and Investment Group (TIG) of BDO do that for you. What it actually does is to place your money in an investment pool (some call it a war chest), a large fund where BDO’s fund managers seek out financial markets where they can take advantage of economies of scale.

This is also a perfect opportunity for the overseas Filipino workers (OFW) that struggle to work outside the comforts of home and the company of their loved ones. There’s a story about OFWs who never owned a credit card before they arrived in Abu Dhabi but was recently jailed in a debtor’s prison for incurring up to $27,000 in unpaid bills. Like what was preached during a recent public seminar on personal finance, OFWs can also follow the rule of setting aside 30 percent of their total monthly savings (that’s income minus expenses) to contribute to their BDO EIP fund; this way, they allow their money to grow over the entire time they are working outside the Philippines while they continue to subsidize their cost of living and that of their loved ones.

Those who took advantage of the market ups and downs and stayed put and true to their original investment objectives and investment time horizons came out ahead!

Start Your Personal Investment Plan Now

There is much to discuss about BDO’s EIP program. For one, it can tell you exactly where it places your money, like the Peso Money Market Fund, Peso Bond Fund, Peso GS Fund, and others more. They can tell you about when your investment is computed daily, minimum holding periods, settlement periods, and so on. But to gain a better perspective on how you can invest, talk to their fund manager about your current income, monthly expenses, retirement targets and life goals so the fund manager can more specifically determine which type of EIP you should enroll, or even a combination, and how much should you start with. For those living and working outside the Philippines, you can find the nearest BDO partners in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.

“The key to investing is time.” Funds that are invested for longer periods achieve higher returns; those invested for shorter periods yield lower returns – but there still are returns! However, keep in mind that UITFs are trust products, not deposits, and are not insured by the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC). It’s a trust agreement between you and BDO that the latter will use every means and way to invest your money properly and achieve the best yield.

Sources: BDO Easy Investment Plan | PDIC | Investopedia

Title photo by urbanortigas at Flickr.com

Other photos courtesy of BDO.com.ph

Disclaimer: I was not contracted by anyone to write for Banco De Oro nor have I been or will be compensated for such, in cash or kind. I met Ador Abrogena, Executive Vice President of BDO’s Trust and Investments Group, during a public seminar where he, together with Randell Tiongson, asked me and other bloggers to write about their EIP program.

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I recently attended the whole-day seminar on personal finance, “Steps to Financial Peace,” by none other than Randell Tiongson, a Registered Financial Planner (RFP) in the Philippines and a strong advocate of personal finance management, with guest speakers Francis Kong, Paulo Tibig, Jayson Lo and Ador Abrogena.

Francis Kong

I always remember listening to Francis Kong on the radio when I was stuck in the car with my late dad and he would love to listen to DZFE-FM where Francis had his daily inspirational talk on business and faith. Today, he is a sought-out motivational speaker to far-flung regions of the migrant and overseas Filipino community, giving 360 talks in 365 days of each year, as he says.

I personally met Paulo Tibig at the “Wealth Summit” and saw him again during the launch party of a company I used to work for in a short amount of time. Paulo has built his logistics company from ground-up and has also gone through the trials of being an entrepreneur. Today, he is an active officer with the Philippine Franchising Association, enthusiastically advocating franchising and entrepreneurship in the country.

Jayson Lo is a new guy to me, with a brief introduction by Randell before he went up on stage to give his talk on his successes, failures and trials in business, losing millions and gaining it back all over again. His story breathes optimism and faith, that despite being down in the rut there should be no direction but up.

Paulo Tibig

Ador Abrogena heads the Trust and Investment Group of Banco De Oro (BDO). They were the major sponsor of the event and this allowed them to present their product as a means to invest money into different financial instruments, i.e. equities, that yields far more returns than nominal savings accounts or worse the piggy bank.

But this was Randell’s show, with each speaker helping hone the messages that Randell spoke of. Like I mentioned, he started off his whole-day talk with education, and the lack of it, in a subject of personal finance that strikes hard into each one of us, from the time we start earning an income to the time most of the video displays of our entire life pass us by in a short span of time. Why is that? Why is our academic institutions not teaching us the rudiments of personal finance? Why didn’t they tell us what a life insurance is for, accident protection, educational and pension plans, stocks, futures, bonds and so many other ways we can make our money earn more rather than the piggy bank mentality of savings?

Jayson Lo

Randell showed his attendees a video on economic freedom, commenting that the more open and free the economy of a nation is, the more the residents benefit from it financially. The Philippines has a pseudo way of doing it, like opening corporate ownership to foreign entities at 100% for a selected list of industries; I observe that until the industry proves itself first, the Philippine government will not budge at lowering the barriers. Is money remittance the only means to sustaining the wealth of a country? In fact, will it sustain itself or falter once a new nation becomes the new source of skilled, quality workers? Do you think we need more foreign direct investments (FDI)?

I wish I was in high school again, and I was given the chance to attend a public seminar akin to Randell’s where I am awakened by the reality – at an early age – that I need to start planning my life; because today I realize that in order to bring up the stakes of succeeding regardless if an event creates it or not, “life events planning” is the keystone to securing financial success. From school to graduation, from my first job to my second and third one, my first entrepreneurial endeavor and the failures that befall each of them, to my marriage, kids, house, car, tuition fees, health care for everyone, insuring my family’s financial continuity should I die, retirement and the longevity of our lives while we cannot work anymore, and everything that affects my loved ones during and after my death. You think a high school kid will get encouraged to respond positively should he or she attend courses like this? You’ll never know until it happens.

As Randell mentions, there are three ways a person can acquired wealth:

• Inherit it
• Marry it
• Spend less and invest

Of course, the chances of waiting for the first two events to happen is like playing the Lotto – one in a gazillion chance. The best, most rational path to financial peace is the third means; and the age to which you start doing so is so often directly proportional to the odds of succeeding. It’s not just investing cash in financial instruments – the word also describes doing so for yourself. Acquiring new skills, experience, tools to assist you – there are a host of other means to which investing is also related to.

During the break, I was talking to Jenny Magalong, head honcho of Whiteboard, the company responsible for arranging Randell’s seminar, and was telling her how my dad never really prepared for his life events that affected our small-unit family. He only bought one life insurance, and that was out of respect to his brother-in-law, worth a whooping $680 in today’s measurement. He bought no education fund nor anything that prepared him for his retirement. At 54 years of age, he had a stroke which incapacitated him and abruptly ended his professional career and a continued income. By the time he died, all he had left my mom and I was the house. It was good enough I was the only child and supporting such as small family unit wasn’t a huge burden for my dad. I love my dad and my mom, and for everything good that I saw them do during my life; but preparing for the inevitable possibilities of life wasn’t a priority. Typical of the culture to which the average Filipino was brought up, everyone just kept spending but not investing.

The biggest topic which Randell and his guest speakers kept reiterating was all about debt. One story was about a 15,000 Peso per month employee amassing a staggering 1 million Peso debt, done in the course of a few years through friends, relatives and cash advances. It was like a pyramid scheme, loans made to pay off other loans, until the principal and interest payments ballooned to more than 6,000 percent. Another dealt with one who amassed a little less than 10 credit cards and just kept buying beyond her ability to pay until everything exploded in her face and she had maxed-out all her cards.

Obvious to everyone is the simple mathematical equation to financial peace, to wit:

Income – Expenses = Savings

Obviously, income should always be higher than expenses.
Obviously, if income is disturbed, expenses can be controlled down.
Obviously, you should not deduct savings and add it to expenses.
Obviously, savings means extra money stashed away somewhere.

That’s where the falacy of savings exist in our minds: it equates to a savings account in a bank. What many do not know, or attempt to try to know, is that savings also involves investment. Randell tells us the tried and tested rule of getting 30 percent of your total savings and investing this, or making your money grow more money. You leave the 70 percent intact for emergencies and the additional things you want to buy to motivate you to continue doing a good job. (New shoes, anyone?) But as time goes by, you keep iterating the method of investing 30 percent as your income goes up. I will assume that for everyone, 30 percent isn’t much to ask.

Randell Tiongson and me

Personal finance is as common as common sense tells you – save, invest, lessen cost, find more means to increase income. If you are reading this, it means you have access to the internet. Spend an hour a day sifting through the many ways of saving, of investing, of lessening your cost, of finding additional means to more income. You can also force yourself to start using some tools like a daily expense tally, or go more complex like using QuickBooks and the like. The faster means is hire a retained accountant to do your personal finance books, and a personal finance consultant to help you find the better and comfortable means to managing your finance, no matter how small it is. I remember Randell telling me it only costs about 18,000 Pesos or so to hire a good personal finance consultant which accounts for a series of one-on-one sessions, not just one.

You have to educate yourself to learning more about personal finance management. The likes of Randell’s whole day seminar is a small drop in a bucket of learning how to manage your money and how to plan for your future. Today may be great for you but man’s history is generally sought with many ups and downs. When you are in a period where there is no income coming in, are you prepared? Start today; it’s never too late even if you’re 50 or 60 years old. Better if you are 20 or 30 years of age and you begin planning and managing your present and future finances.

Personal finance – something old but still something new. Sounds like getting married? It is. It’s a lifelong commitment.

Title photo by Ken Teegardin at SeniorLiving.org

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I got to this topic after I read the blog of a former office colleague which I never knew he had one. I gave him some tips but noted that I could actually give him more based on my personal experience of experimenting and maintaining my blogs through the years. On a number of occasions, there have been surprising results and obvious mistakes I learned from.

I’m not a blogger who struck it rich by selling advertising space or being a luminary in the speaking circuit. In fact, I’ve turned down every “advertising for peanuts” request in the past all the advertisers had nothing to do with my blog’s theme, the topics I wrote about or even my intended market (of readers.) Those boxes to the right are all my personal ads or messages which relate to my blog categories. Maybe when the right one comes along, I’ll succumb to it. For now, I keep it to myself.

So, in the spirit of the “Hacker Ethic!” (read the Steven Levy book, “Hackers,” and you’ll know why I say it so), here are my top 10 suggestions to maintaining a good blog.

1. Focus and Stay with One Theme or Topic.

Our mind is a chaotic mix of thoughts, ideas, experiences, wants and needs. If you were to outline everything down, you’d probably need weeks or months to do so. Categorizing it is another task. There are just too many topics you’d like to express. That was my dilemma. I just loved expressing many things, not just one. I wanted people to know who I was through my writing.

The solution was to look for a blog theme that allowed me to display, in standard menu web site formatting, the few topics of interest I wanted to express and share. At the same time, I also wanted the normal menu options of “About” and “Contact Us” that you see in most web sites. This is because I always believe that habit is such a hard thing to change in people. The general public has been used to the standard look and feel of web sites, with their menu items at the top and summaries down below. Our eyes continue to use habitual methods of reading – start from the top-left and work your way down with a left-to-right scheme. Anyway, it took me a few days until I chose this blog theme which is something you can use only if you have your own web hosting package; this is not available in the free versions of blogging.

But before the “look and feel” issue was resolved, I already had general idea of why I was creating my blog: I wanted my clients to get to know more about me through my writing. For example, my business network in LinkedIn was able to read a few of my blog posts which enticed them to make the first move to inquire about my products or services. So, my blog is my marketing tool; at the same time, it also allows new acquaintances to get to know me and old friends to learn more about me. This is my main intention and the path to which my blog will continue to exist.

Workshop: Spend some time addressing this question: what do I intend to achieve through my blog? Once you’ve got the answer, start listing all the topics you’d like to express in writing with the answer in mind. Then, categorize these topics or, better yet, choose about two or three categories only excluding the usual “About Us/Me” and “Contact Us/Me.” The “look and feel” you choose will also speak out how you express yourself – choose what you like, not what others do. The rest follow – choosing a blog name, buying a domain name, deciding on free or not-free hosting, learning how to use your blog administrative functions and features, learning some basic HTML codes like centering and hyperlink-referencing. Practice makes perfect.

2. Allow Comments to Create a Conversation

When I started experimenting on blogging, I allowed anyone to write a comment without approval – it just got posted right away. Then, when my blog probably became more visible in search engines or people saw precisely which country was reading my blog the most, I suddenly started seeing comments that had nothing to do with the topic; in fact, most were just message-advertising their product, service, web site or worse, porn sites.

I quickly enabled moderation of comments on my blog and subjectively decided which to allow or trash and delete. For a few where the comments were good but included HTML snippets like “<a href”, I simply erased the code, retained the phrase beside it, and approved the comment. Because of this, I had to reserve at least fifteen minutes a day to manage the pending comments.

In addition, I also realized that there were probably “bots” (web-oriented programs acting like robots inserting predefined comments into blog sites) that were maliciously and automatically pasting comments on my blog posts without human intervention. So, I decided to add a Captcha plug-in, an HTML snippet you can plug into your blog setting or profile to make sure all the comments are being written by human beings, not a bots.

On the brighter side of comments and in the spirit of the slogan to which I named my blog, “The Internet is all about Conversations,” I managed to make a few new friends by way of a string of responses originating from the reader’s first comment, sharing and expressing one’s thoughts, ideas and even principles in life regardless if it were conflicting with me, and allowing other people to learn from the comments and responses the get to read at the bottom of the blog post. So, always respond back to the person who wrote a comment, regardless if it is a praise, complaint or criticism. “After the storm comes the rainbow” speaks well of cordial and respectful responses to even irate or critical comments; you’ll be amazed your once critical reader will suddenly become one of your most loyal subscribers.

This is the major reason why blogs became popular. There were many diary-formatted types of web-based user applications in the past but Blogspot (and its predecessor) forced the issue about comments, and that paved the way to a lively, very real interaction between the reader and the writer. Without forcing bloggers to allow comments, blogging wouldn’t have been that popular.

3. A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

Newspapers have been around since the early 17th century. In the 20th century, photographs have always played a key role in its popularity. After black and white editions came colored versions of the newspaper. In the advent of the Internet, web sites are often a replica of publications – words with pictures. Today, blogs also mimic the newspaper or magazines. Relevant ones, that is.

I also chose the blog theme to which I’ve been using since Day One because it forces me to place a photo or image at the start of my blog post, automatically resized if it doesn’t have the perfect dimensions. If I don’t have the right image, I usually edit one before I come up with the final version. In every photo or image I use, whether I need to or not, I always credit the owner by his, her or the entity’s name, and the reference web site address, i.e. Flickr.com, Facebook.com. Where do I get these photos and images, you ask?

• I source out publicly-available photographs in the internet that doesn’t need licensing;
• I use my personal photographs or images;
• I borrow someone else’s with their permission;
• I use the ones that come with programs and applications I buy and own, i.e. Microsoft Powerpoint comes loaded with photos and images;
• I buy one from the stock photo suppliers in the web if it’s affordable.

Pictures don’t just lure your blog visitor to read your posts; they are also important when you or your social media network share your blog post in social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and social news web sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, to name a few. When you or your readers share the link of your blog post, the photo or image inserted in your blog post forms part of the shared link. Hence, the same effect of “a picture paints a thousand words” lures the person to click on the link and read your blog post.

4. Tags are Important for Future References

Tags are index terms that search engines and social news web sites use to discover your blog. They index it (or tag it) so when that tag item is used for listing or searching the tag, your blog comes up in the list. The more hits your blog receives for particular search engines or social news web sites, besides tagging, the higher the ranking of your blog post in its list. So, tags are important. My rule of thumb for tags is that if the word of phrase doesn’t exist in my blog post, it doesn’t get tagged. This, however, is not a strict blogging rule.

Rather than explaining tags comprehensively, it’s best you read more about its intricacies. Try reading about tags in Wikipedia, especially section 4 entitled “Advantages and disadvantages.”

What tags have done for my blog is bring it up higher in the food chain of the search engines, so to speak. Today, my top three popular tags to this blog are “call center,” “Kunnect,” and “Pekson.” In my other blog, www.miniphilippines.com, 11 percent from the thousands of total hits this blog has encountered all originate from the search engine phrase “philippines typhoon.” This is because in 2009 I blogged so much about typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng that I ended up with thousands of hits per day during those separate yet unforgettable events. So today, every time someone searches that phrase, the blog post about either typhoons comes up on the list of top links. Not that it’s relevant today but it catches the attention of a first time visitor which may lead him or her to browse or surf my blog for any post of interest.

What you can do that I’ve never attempted (yet) is to approach companies or organizations and offer them line advertising, graphical box advertsing, or even a box advertorial inside your top blog posts. Again, it’s your call if you’d like to impede something outside the theme or topic of your blog posts.

5. Add a Social Media Plug-in

There’s a famous phrase about Facebook which I’ve used in my social media training poster. It reads, “If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan.” I wrote that last year and I don’t know if it’s overtaken a few more countries in the list; I’m guessing it has.

Adding a social media plug-in like AddToAny.com allows your reader to share your blog post across the dozens, if not hundreds of social media and social news web sites. Doing so also increases the popularity of your blog post, not to mention the number hits.

6. Add a Visitor Counter

On top of what your blogging application provides you regarding statistics, I also find it good to know where my readers are coming from. I got stuck using FlagCounter.com because I didn’t have time to go looking for something better; FlagCounter suited my needs. The only thing I did was reduce the size of the FlagCounter HTML snippet to 18×18 pixels, small enough not to be noticed but big enough for me to click into it when I need statistics by country.

Today, this blog gets read by 34 percent coming from the USA, 30 percent from the Philippines, 4.9 percent from Canada, and from 66 other countries. Though I sometimes pinpoint the Philippines as the place of my professional or personal experience in many of my blog posts, it is also my writing intent to try to be geographically unbiased so that people from other countries can relate to my words. Hence, more people outside the Philippines are actually visiting and reading my blog posts. That’s good because that is my intent and it is not a surprise to me. The same holds true for www.miniphilippines.com which gets 50.2 percent from Philippine-based visitors and 49.8 percent from 152 other countries (25.6 percent are coming from the USA and 6.8 percent from Canada, as the top two countries below the Philippines.)

7. Advertise Your Own

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, I’ve only placed personal ad lines and boxes in my blog because any of these always relates to the theme, categories and topics of my blog site. I have had little less than 10 percent of my visitors clicking on these ad boxes for which I have no idea why they do – I can only guess interest or appeal of graphics as two probabilities. Yet, ten percent of the thousands of hits reveal some hundreds of clicks – which is still a good thing!

So, if you do some type of business or work part-time or otherwise, you may want to advertise those on your blog. In the past, I’ve advertised my high school’s events, my friends’ blogs and events, even my ex-wife’s business, and maybe a funny quip or two to let my readers know, “Hey! I can also be funny!” Just make sure it relates to you as the owner of the blog, or the blog’s theme, category or topic. Anything out of context can confuse your reader or worse, alienate people not to go back to your blog anymore.

8. Create a Facebook Page or Group

What’s the difference between a Facebook Page and a Facebook Group? Read my previous post, “Facebook in the Middle.”

Whatever your decision is, the reality that more and more people are starting their day with Facebook is something to consider. This social media behemoth has now replaced many of the habitual news web sites we used to start our day with, like Yahoo.com or some specific news web site. The joke goes that, if before, when people wake up in the morning it’s the newspaper and a cup of coffee; nowadays, it’s Facebook and anything to drink. LOL!

Search popularity of being on the top list as a Facebook Page or Group still belongs to normal, everyday words used in the name or label of your Facebook Page or Group plus the number of fans or members. So, name it as how it relates to your blog. For example, one of my business web sites is www.kunnectph.com and this relates to a WordPress blog site. However, the battle-cry I’ve used for this freelance business has always been “Talk is Cheap!” So, I’ve aptly named or labeled the corresponding Facebook Page to “Talk is Cheap!” while retaining the Facebook Page’s username to simply “Kunnect”.

In the past, I thought of marketing myself by creating a Facebook Page which bears my name in both the label or title and the username. Guess what? I had about five fans over the course of a year. You think I’d be famous right away? The point is it was a wrong move. Last month, I deleted the Facebook Page that bore my name and created a new one using “The Internet is All About Conversations” as the label or title, and the username is shortened to “internetconversations.” Today, I have dozens of fans without any marketing; just the simple interest of people liking my Facebook Page. It’s a good start!

9. Create a Twitter Account

I have two Twitter accounts – one each for MiniPhilippines and Pekson.com. Anything that has to do with the Philippines or Filipinos anywhere in the world gets tweeted in the former. Anything else I would like to share to the world uses the latter account. Then, I add icons or buttons on my respective blogs to link either Twitter accounts – but not both! Again, don’t confuse your visitor or reader. If they land on your blog, show them the way to the right and appropriate social media site, like your Facebook Page or Group, or your Twitter account.

Why Twitter? Thousands, if not millions of people are actually using Twitter to search specific words in tweets (or those 140 character messages) and hashtags. If you happen to be one of them, there’s a good chance that a Twitter user will click on the shortened hyperlink found in your tweet and land on your blog. You can also install a plug-in (called a Widget) that lists the latest tweets you’ve sent on your blog page.

10. Adjust but Don’t Quit

Like any successful endeavor you or other people have done with their lives, both professionally and personally, intent, focus, desire and the will to succeed forces you to continue despite any setback. It’s same goes for blogging. Even if you shifted jobs and are now neck deep in work with your new employer, find the time to keep adjusting, enhancing and writing for your blog. The moment you stop, you will begin to lose your followers or readers.

I’ve had a few false starts with blogging. I think there were about two blogs I started with gusto but failed to motivate myself to continue and lost the interest. But here’s another surprising story – it is (again) about MiniPhilippines. There was a time not too long ago that precisely as I had described in the previous paragraph, I was neck deep with work that I didn’t post anything for three weeks. Yet, this blog site kept getting the number of hits I didn’t expect. Why? Because I’ve had the blog for a little less than two years and with so much content and tags filed and indexed in cyberspace, the number of daily hits didn’t drastically fall. It was still being visited especially by the new ones. After seeing this, I began cornering myself to start posting again.

In Summary

There are thousands of more tips and suggestions on the web on how best to maintain your blog and make it successful. Google it and you’ll be overwhelmed by it. My intent is to let you know it can be done even with as little as a few hours per week. Just don’t stop if it means well for you to start expressing yourself in writing; and blogging is the easiest way to publish yourself for free. What I wrote is based on my experience, not someone else’s. Others will have many more to add to my list.

In closing, my peers and I, young or old, would always tell each other in the past that once we retire, we will either teach or write a book or do both. Now that you have this online activity called blogging and the resources for blogging abound like fresh water in Canada, wouldn’t you think that everything you write today can actually be compiled to resemble a book in the future? All you need to do is to start writing it.

Ahh, blogging. There comes a time when “you can’t live without it.” So, have fun expressing yourself or your business!

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If you and your business or organization would like to learn how to engage using social media networking and marketing the right way, I conduct a four-hour crash course entitled (click) “Social Media for the Workplace.“

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Antonio Lumanlan Pekson (1934-1994)

My Dad was “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” as a quote from one of my favorite TV series. He was a handyman at home, always teaching me how to do things on my own than rely on the household help or service people – house repair and car repair. He was also a workaholic, passionate with the jobs I remember him at Philippine Refining Company (now Unilever) and Solid Mills, a garments manufacturing entity. As a Mechanical Engineer by education and occupation, he was also very sociable, loving his professional organization the Philippine Society of Mechanical Engineers (PSME) with gusto until the day he died. For everything good a son sees in his Dad, I saw plenty in him despite many more minor faults.

Death in the family is not easy to cope up with. I cried at my Dad’s death bed in the hospital and because of the heavy emotional feeling, my Mom and I even mixed up his memorial service to one we had no prepaid plan with; but with the help of my Mom’s friend, Olive Ventura, we were able to sort things out. After my outburst at the hospital, I shed no tear, even during the start of the wake and at the burial. As marriage partners are, my newly wed wife Carina was always there to console me during that stressful time. I did sob like crazy when one time I sat alone on a respite of a few hours from the wake.

The past weeks, I have had spurts of sadness because from the time my Dad died, I tried to be a good son to my “other Dad.” The sadness is that we both never really grew close to each other, never talked of things as father-and-son would talk about, always there to respect his authority and stature as the patriarch of my wife’s family; but, the essense of closeness wasn’t there.

My other Dad’s death was sudden. He was 74. Recently in April this year, he and my “Other Mom” celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary by renewing their marriage vows in an informal ceremony held in their province of origin where the entire clan was there to witness the event.

My other sadness speaks of my marital relationship with my wife during this time of despair – I am not around to console her. For not telling a longer story outside my words today, I can only pray that she and her four other siblings find peace and respite knowing that their Dad is now at peace. I can only imagine my “Real Dad” with his open arms welcoming my other Dad and hugging each other – that scene gives me a happier feeling.

Papa, as commonly as I called my other Dad through my married years and up to now, has had a long, winding journey in life, bearing both successes and failures as he approached each challenge with gusto. Like myself, he is also an only child, having lost his Dad at an early age. But he was more focused in his work than I was. Even if there were special moments in his children’s lives that he wasn’t present, he repaid his absence with enourmous gusto. No one is perfect, not I nor anyone in the world; we have our strengths and weaknesses. But, we try to cope with the time we’re given to nurture and love those around us.

Me and my in-laws

I will miss the last, remaining Dad in my physical world. I am happy that I had the chance to last see him in April as Carina and my kids also did. I am sad that he is gone but there are hundreds of fervent memories encapsulated in my mind about him, good things that I know will allow me to bring more essence in my life.

Goodbye, Papa. May you rest in peace with God, our Lord Jesus and the angels and saints above. And please hug my Dad for me when you see him in heaven.

A belated Happy Father’s Day to you both!

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Addendum: My former boss, friend and pilot-blogger Tonet Rivera just posted a YouTube video that reminds us all of how the imperfections make our loved ones… perfect!

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Title photo by Taylor Spaulding Photography (spudjnr123) at Flickr.com

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!”

In 1999, Thomas Friedman came out with a book entitled “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” where he postulated that the world is currently undergoing two struggles:

• The drive for prosperity and development, and
• The desire to retain identity and traditions.

In the same book, he came up with a famous theory, the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, where it stated: “No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s.”

Though some small businesses (in the Philippines) try to mimic the western world in its style and manner of selling globally, it fails to consider one of the important postulates of Friedman: retaining one’s identity and traditions. That cultural difference makes the business stand above the rest, especially coming from a developing country. Even as you find the fastest and most cost-effective route to market and sell your products and services, who you are make a huge difference.

The micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) in the Philippines employ 70 percent of the country’s workforce, with a large concentration in the domestic sector, i.e. wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, and hotels and restaurants, with 50 percent alone in the wholesale and retail trade. Of 1,000 firms currently exporting abroad, 70 percent are SMEs. The entire MSME community accounts for 25 percent of the country’s total export revenue, mainly through subcontracting arrangements with larger firms or as suppliers to export companies. (1)

But why is it that many MSMEs feel a huge challenge to exporting their products and services? The Global Facilitation Partnership for Trade and Transport (2005) lists fourteen barriers to internationalizing small and medium-sized business:

1. Lack of entrepreneurial, managerial and marketing skills;
2. Bureaucracy;
3. Difficulty in accessing information and knowledge;
4. Difficulty in accessing financial resources / a lack of capital;
5. Lack of access to investment (technology, equipment and knowhow);
6. Nonconformity in standardization, a lack of quality awareness and a lack of mutual recognition schemes;
7. Product and service range, and usage differences;
8. Language barriers and cultural differences;
9. Risks in selling abroad;
10. Competition from indigenous SMEs in foreign markets;
11. Unfair behavior of multinational companies against domestic SMEs / a lack of government supply-support programs;
12. Complexity of trade documentation;
13. A lack of government incentives for internationalization of SMEs; and
14. Inadequate intellectual property protection.

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.