Sitel Highlights Value of Call Center Outsourcing to the Philippines

For the past decade, the Phillipines has been an attractive call center outsourcing destination due to its educated, English-speaking population. 2011 has been no exception as, the Philippines now leads India in call center jobs, employing 350,000 compared with India’s 330,000, according to the Contact Center Association of the Philippines, which represents the country’s call center operations.

In a recent USA TODAY interview Steve Barker, general manager of Sitel in the Asia Pacific region shared that Sitel’s seven call centers in the Philippines represent the company’s largest offshore contact center hub and form an essential part of Sitel’s global enterprises of 52,000 highly trained associates who offer 36 different languages to support a wide range of customers. 

In this approach to call center outsourcing, the company believes that you do not have to trade quality as a result of moving business transactions or customer interactions to the Philippines. 

Sitel’s call center outsourcing strategy has enabled the company to reduce service costs, improve customer retention and even increase overall revenue per customer. The company promises to deliver the best return on customer investments possible for its clients, using its effective call center outsourcing model to get the job done. 

The range of services offered by the company includes technical support, customer acquisition, customer care, back-office processing, risk management and receivables and collections. The company acknowledges that its agents are its business, therefore aspiring to be the best BPO business in the Asia Pacific. 

The Black Book of Outsourcing has referred to Sitel as the number one global call center outsourcing provider. From this independent investigation into customer satisfaction in the industry, Sitel received top scores in 11 critical performance categories, such as vertical expertise, reliability, trust, flexibility, innovation and customization. 

In a separate interview, Barker shared that he believes there is an understanding of the investment potential in the Philippines, simply because call center outsourcing is growing in this region. He also believes one of the reasons why the Philippines has become such a popular destination for BPO is that the sector is visibly dedicated to delivering high quality service. 

Which such dedication to quality, the Philippines will continue to play an integral part in the BPO sector, which is growing at a general rate of 15 percent. The educated and skilled labor force in the region ensures that quality agents are always available and Sitel focuses on delivering the necessary coaching and training to ensure these agents can deliver the high quality service expected from all clients. 

In his final note, Barker highlighted that the Philippines is open for business, and no company has to trade quality for the process improvements they can experience by leveraging call center outsourcing to this part of the Asia Pacific.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jamie Epstein