Bangalore Jokes Manila beatings at $ 21 billion-Call Center Career

During the last decade, Americans dial customer service was a great opportunity to be connected to someone in India. Now they are more likely to end up calling the Philippines.

Strong government support, a supply of university graduates speak English and an effort to call center operators to reduce their dependence on India have helped Argentina beat India in call center revenue, Bloomberg reported BusinessWeek in its issue of 06 December.

"Not that we're trying to take business from India," said Oscar Sanez, executive director of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines, an industry group. "We're finding our own place in the sun."

Philippines earn 5.7 billion U.S. dollars for the call center job this year in the U.S., Europe and Australia, compared with 5.5 billion dollars generated by India, according to the Everest Group, one with Dallas-based outsourcing advisory firm working with industry in the Philippines. The two centers represent about half of the global industry of 21 billion U.S. dollars, according to the Everest.

Call center operators said they like the Philippines because English is taught in schools and Filipinos have a cultural affinity of the U.S., which ruled the country from 1898 to 1946.

6 percent of GDP

"Clearly these guys had a much later start, but they have achieved," said Everest Group partner Nikhil Rajpal.

India remains a leader in global outsourcing revenue at $ 70 billion, compared with $ 9 billion to the Philippines, according to BPAP-India National Association of Software and Services Companies, a lobbying group in New Delhi . The outsourcing industry now employs 530,000 people in the Philippines, according to Everest, and is about 6 percent of gross domestic product, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

A decade ago, millions of young Filipinos, especially the English-speaking nurses and students of law, immigrated to the U.S., Hong Kong and elsewhere. The billions of dollars sent home each year represented the country's second largest foreign exchange earner after Texas Instruments chips and other technology companies, according to World Bank data.

Tax Breaks

Frustrated government officials looked to India for inspiration, said Celeste Ilagan, who spent the last ten years working in government programs to encourage outsourcing and now heads the Global SPI communications, a call center operator property Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., the nation's largest company by market value.

"India had become very famous for call centers, and decided to learn from their example," he said.

To better understand India's success, Filipino officials visited industry representatives there. The Philippine government has streamlined the approval process for companies setting up call centers and change its rules to allow individual buildings to be designated special economic zones, according to the Economic Zone Authority of the Philippines.

These zones offer tax incentives, authorizations for building permits quick and exemption from import duties on computers and telecommunications equipment. About 40,000 students have benefited from government-sponsored training to improve their English skills and communication, Sanez said.

English Jokes

Call centers are changing the rhythms of Philippine life. Shopping malls, bars, cinemas and cafes have appeared near the buildings where young workers earn up to 300,000 pesos night ($ 6.850) per year in a country where annual per capita GDP in 2009 was about 83 thousand dollars, depending data compiled by Bloomberg.

Weaned on radio stations that play U.S. Top 40 pop and hip-hop, young people seeking work in call centers can joke in English as naturally as his native Tagalog. Most shifts begin at 8 pm, as the U.S. East Coast wakes up.

"Before I had some doubts about letting young people work so late at night, but now has become an industry that young people aspire to," said Thea Lu, 30, team leader with 24 / 7 care client, based in Campbell, California.

Several companies currently operating in the Philippines participated in the revolution of outsourcing in India and then spread abroad. A tax break for outsourcing wigwams expires in 2011, although the industry is lobbying hard against it.

Wipro, Tata Consultancy

In Bangalore and Gurgaon, the India's largest outsourcing centers, businesses rely on diesel generators to ensure electricity, running fleets of buses to transport employees to and from work, and struggle with the wear that can reach 50 percent per year. These challenges and the desire to diversify geographically, have encouraged the Indian and U.S. companies operating call centers in India for work to the Philippines.

Wipro Ltd., based in Bangalore, India, established in the Philippine city of Cebu in 2007 and now has 2,000 workers in the country. For the year 2014, is expected to be 8,000.

24 / 7 Customer, which started operations in India in 2000, opened an office in the Philippines in 2005. Currently has 4,000 employees in the country, compared with 3,000 in India.

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., the largest of India's software services, said on 02 December would open a business process outsourcing in the central Philippines.

Double revenues

"It's very sad that India could not keep up with their neighbors," 24 / 7 co-founder Shanmugam Nagarajan said.

The outsourcing industry in the Philippines has set a goal of doubling revenues by at least 2015, said Sanez. The biggest challenge is the shortage of managerial talent, Rajpal said. In an industry so young, few people have enough time for work in management or strategy.

"Where will we find the right kind of leadership that can make our business stand out?" Said Steve Baker, who heads the Asian operations of Sitel Worldwide Corp., a company in Nashville, Tennessee-based which has 10,000 workers and seven facilities in the Philippines.

The Philippines also produces only about 10 percent, many engineers as India, according to the graduation of both countries. ready supply of engineers in India has helped its companies range from outsourcing your call attention to the account management, technical support and consultancy work include banks to help manage financial derivatives and improving supply retailers.

"Ten years after the line, the Philippines can be a hot destination," said Sanjeev Bhatia, who oversees the international operations of Wipro BPO. "But in IT and software, India does not really have any competition."