Can Philippines Produce 300K Call Center Agents by 2010?
Questions have arisen regarding Philippine contact centers’ capacity as executives representing the local contact center industry prepare to unveil its roadmap to 2010.
The Contact Center of the Philippines (CCAP) is scheduled to unveil the roadmap for the next three years in a two-day conference in Manila next week.
Today, the Philippines has about 200,000 contact center professionals working in different companies, said Raffy David, director of marketing and quality assurance of Pilipinas Teleserv Inc. and board director of the CCAP.
The demand for more workers in this sunshine industry continues to grow, with local companies hiring about 1,000 agents a month, said Benedict Hernandez, vice president and general of the Philippine operations of eTelecare Global Solutions.
The industry’s problem is no longer about attracting business from other countries but being able to serve the requirements of a global industry for offshore contact center contracts, added Victor Endaya, president and chief executive officer of Advanced Contact Solutions Inc.
“The call center industry is here to stay. We’ve survived hiring issues which still hound us today. We’ve survived the depreciation of the peso, among others. Still we’ve grown,” David said.
Declining to give details of its roadmap, CCAP’s David said the industry needs at least 500,000 contact center agent professionals by 2010, a target the organization has come up with after extrapolating its current demand but considering the 19-percent yearly attrition
rate.
David admitted that 19 percent is “not that bad” for the growth the industry is still experiencing. But the executive noted that the industry is also trying to figure out where the industry would get its supply of labor.
“Before, we were having problems on where to get the demand. Now we’re trying to find out how to fulfill that demand; if the demand will remain in 2010, and where is demand coming from?” David added.
Other issues hounding the local contact center industry is the “upward pressure of salaries,” which is brought about by the low supply of labor, the executive said.
CCAP is now composed of 34 contact center companies based in the Philippines. The organization is working with the Business Process Outsourcing Association and McKinsey on the roadmap for 2010, said Jojo Uligan, executive director of CCAP. Continue reading
