If you’ve heard that call center agents from the Philippines are courteous and happy, you heard correctly. And if you saw how nice their working conditions are you’d understand why they’re so happy and polite.
The fact is that recruiters from the top and mid-tier Philippine Call Centers are able to recruit the best and brightest of young Filipinos graduating from college every year because they offer such outstanding working conditions and benefits packages. That’s why in the year 2010 the call center industry accounted for over 10% of the jobs taken by new college graduates.
Even by US standards, working conditions in most Philippine Call Centers is very good. And conditions in the top tier (i.e. the 20 biggest) are downright stellar.
Consider how Philippine Call Center compensation compares to wages for the average Filipino. CPAs fresh out of college frequently must take jobs as bank tellers earning around $250 (US) a month….maybe they’ll earn more if they actually get a job in a real CPA firm. The problem is…there just isn’t enough opportunity to go around in the Philippines. Registered electrical engineers often earn less than $50 (US) a day.
So, as you can easily understand, a young Filipino fresh out of college earning a beginning salary of $700 (US) a month working as a call center agent is a pretty big deal for them. And that’s not even considering any of the other benefits that the top-tier Call Centers of the Philippines provide their employees.
Imagine working for a company that has game rooms, TV rooms, break-out rooms, billiard rooms, PC cafes, free coffee, tea and other liquid refreshments, cafeterias (with the food free or heavily subsidized), cell phone allowances, travel allowances and even dormitories for employees who want to arrive early or stay late in order to catch better travel connections.
That’s just a few of the benefits enjoyed by those employees lucky enough to get jobs with the top-tier of Philippine Call Centers. Benefits at the mid-tier companies are very similar.
The Business Process Outsourcing industry is doing very well right now. True, it’s not a business model that 100% replica- table just anywhere in the world. There has to be a labor source for the large numbers call center agents required and those agents need to be able to speak good English. Only a very few countries worldwide have those situations….notably India and the Philippines.
The Philippines, in 2010, surpassed India as the Number One worldwide destination for outsourced Call Center activities. Because of that growth, the competition for agents in the Philippines is getting fierce. That’s why the top-tier and mid-tier Philippine Call Center companies offer such attractive benefits packages.
The good news is that Philippine wages are still far those of comparable US jobs and Philippine Call Center companies are still able to recruit the agents they need. The hub of Call Center activity in the Philippines is in Manila, the countries capital, and that’s where you find all of the top-tier Philippine Call Centers.
That means you, if you’re considering contracting work to a Philippine Call Center…you still can and you’ll save 30-60% over the cost of anything comparable from stateside service providers. Give us a call today.