Where Have They Gone?

Brain drain is a social phenomenon wherein professionals educated, trained and practice here in the Philippines particularly, is enticed to go abroad to seek greener pastures. The result is that fewer professionals are practicing their chosen field in the country, having a shortage of manpower across all professions. It started with nursing, and then medical professionals such as doctors and medical technologists started to get into the trend as well. As the development of the world progressed and the internet becoming a super highway of information and facts, there has also been an increase in the demand for information and computer related professionals here and abroad.

And because of this demand there is now the “virtual brain drain”. But this particular brain drain has more of a positive feedback than the latter. The effects of the virtual brain drain is not actually bad, in fact it has helped the county’s economy if not increased the number of jobs available. Virtual contact centers and virtual call centers have been growing both in numbers and in popularity. This is the main reason that most fresh graduates flock to existing call centers. There is no experience needed, nor have any qualms about educational attainment. Regardless of the degree, call center jobs are still very popular. And even now that businesses and companies hire virtual agents that could work at home, the interest on the job just doubled.

Teachers, nurses and I.T. graduates all work for call centers while awaiting the board exam. Some do this to save up money for the review or as a temporary route to the original plan. But sadly, almost 20% of all future professionals who enter the industry never leave especially if promotion was offered or if they job pays higher than their chosen field. This virtual brain drain is evident by the lack of practicing teachers, while to some, like nurses, it has become their redemption after the over population of the profession.

But is it that virtual call centers and contact call centers here in the Philippine thrive regardless of the disinterest of the majority of the population to work in the industry? As stated before, the job is short lived, you could get a job part time and yet earn higher (you are actually paid in dollars but given as peso), no specific qualifications except good communication skills and a good grasp of the English language. Aside from that, the job is in essence, uncomplicated.

This apparent brain drain is a looming predicament to all of us. Yes, technologically we may be behind, but the emergence of these call centers in the country proves that when it comes to job performance and exertion, the Filipinos are a force to reckon with. The same problems are still eminent, lack of professionals in different fields, but virtual call centers also bring to light several other problems. One is that social interactions of people are limited to computers. While this may be a valid form of communication, it does not have the same human affect and contact we all need. the remoteness will cause problems later on such as long periods of isolation from human contact.

Distress in Globalization

Global businesses aren’t just concerned with gaining enough revenues and making it to the top, the competition now has fallen on the capability to stay afloat with the stiff competition and the downfall of the global economy. With the help of modernized technology and super computers, business have expanded and developed faster and faster every day.

BPO or Business Process Outsourcing has become one of the few reasons why businesses across the globe have become competitive. Having a virtual call center from a professional and trusted BPO company is your answer to the questions about making it through a globally competitive business world, with a fraction of a cost. You will be able to give your customers the kind of service they deserve plus not burn a whole in your pockets.

Having the aid of a call center is not new; it just evolved into something more beneficial and advanced. Call center services has become the secret of leading businesses, it allows the company to operate in a systematic and smooth manner without the determined costs and payments. It is still a popular plan for emerging businesses with $85 Million of investments. And because of this, there are many who are going into battle with more skilled and proficient call center agents. The proof of this ever popular method is in the way virtual call centers are popping up everywhere.

But the number one reason why the strategy is popular among businesses is the way it reduces the actual spending of money by companies. Outsourcing means not having to pay for an additional room in the company building, hiring new people and buying new equipment. Outsourcing has become popular in countries like India and the Philippines because costs of operations are actually cheaper and there is a steady pool of workforce.

The number of people who are equipped with skills and talents for a call center job are surprisingly huge in these countries. And this is actually a positive thing for big businesses and companies. Handling the multiple tasks of running a business is no easy feat, and you cannot simply ask someone to do all those things. Call centers do all this for you, they hire professionals that have knowledge and skills to address the issues you have to your company. They will be trained and taught how to handle your clients and to give them the best customer service they deserve. Not only that, they will also be in-charge of lead generation and sales for your products. By hiring a virtual call center, it eases your worries about the troubles that come with running a company.

Home Based Virtual Call Centers

The economy has greatly affected the way businesses looked at expansion. Every day, businesses are closing up their internal call centers due to overwhelming costs. Many of these closing call centers are replaced by virtual call centers, especially those that have home-based agents. Why is this so? Many businesses see that reduced costs and expenditures come with outsourcing to home-based agents allowing their companies to grow three-fold if successful.

This particular type of business strategy has been gaining popularity for the last few years and it has continued to grow because of the many success stories. It is the perfect mix of traditional call center and modernized convenience. Not only does off-shore outsourcing reduces costs, it also has other benefits like eliminating particulars like culture differences, agent turnover and such. Virtual call center uses home based agents and they may not reduce the costs as much but it is the perfect way to expand and at the same time minimize other costs.

Another advantage of using home based virtual call center agents is employee preservation. This is because most agents are happy to be working at home. Through this, you will also have a bigger pool of people whom you could employ like stay at home mothers and those who are unable to leave the house because of a disability. This flexibility and luxury of working at home eliminates strict rules an in-house virtual call center and when this happens, agents are happy. When they are happy, they tend to work harder and when this happens, revenues go up. And when profits increase, your company can grow without the staggering costs usually associated with progress.

Another positive thing about working at home is that it gives you the opportunity to focus on work alone, and not be bothered by socialization towards other agents. Agents are rarely in conflict and are less like to be weary of the work done. Agents are most likely to skip absences and apply for leave as well.

The main purpose why a company exists is to gain profit. With virtual call centers, you can be assured of it. A word of caution though, not all call centers can produce the same results, that is why it is necessary to be meticulous about choosing virtual contact centers especially over the internet. Off-shore outsourcing is a huge gamble, you wouldn’t want to invest on something that may be the reason of your company’s collapse.

Virtual Jobs

The economy has been down for the last few months, but the emergence of more jobs has given hope to the market. More online jobs are available than those that stacks you up in desks. No more 8 to 5 jobs or traveling miles to get to work. The internet has over 2 million job openings and most of these are for virtual call centers. This ever growing industry has provided many jobs to those who wish not to be bounded by the usual ways of having jobs. This has also opened doors of opportunities for all stay at home moms and dads to earn a living while in the comforts of their home.

People who work in call centers are known by a wide assortment of aliases. Call center agents, virtual assistants and home based agents are just some of the more famous names dubbed to those who work in contact centers. The most common type of job that they do handle is inbound and outbound calls which virtual call centers are experts at. They handle customer service, company support and product inquiries whether through the telephone, through email, chat or fax.

If your job entail that you provide service to a company’s clients and customers, then you are part of an important scheme to keep customers pleased and content. And when they are happy and satisfied, they remain loyal to the company who has hired you. This type of performance assures that you will have a long and successful career in the virtual call center industry. You will not only be able to work from the comforts of your own home, you will be earning more, approximately $10 to $15 an hour.

There are draw backs however, although the positive side of the job outweighs the negatives, it is still important to know what are the possible consequences of a job in the BPO industry. It is essential to possess the right communication skills to achieve something in the job, and not having the right tone of voice or the diction to communicate properly is a worrying feature. Mostly, call centers prefer their agents to speak with an accent depending from where their companies are based, and not having the ability to learn and adapt the language can be a problem. Another problem is that you may not be able to keep up with the schedule. Although virtual call centers have stay at home options, most companies want their clients to receive 24 hours and 7 days a week service.

There is no question that call center jobs will still be in demand for the next few years, until outsourcing demands lowers. But until then, you might want to consider a career in virtual call centers.

Increasing Productivity in Contact Centers

There are helpful technologies are available for agents to help themselves in improving productivity, the key agent self-help tools include:

*Collaboration tools (between agents and supervisors) to makes real-time planning, tracking and exception handling easier and allows agents to log in and view schedules and request changes. These not only automate shift bidding, but also introduce a higher degree of fairness in awarding shifts. An automated rules engine is able to factor in seniority or ‘bonus points’ and assign shifts accordingly.

*Knowledge bases intuitive to provide access to complex product/service information to the agent while interacting with the customer (and typically can be similarly accessed by customer self service applications)

*e-learning tools to provide focused training (‘soft’ call handling and negotiation skills as well as product/service knowledge and cross/up-selling techniques).

In virtual contact centers, there are not a large amount of tools that empower an agent to self improve. What does exist are systems and application that store and make information available to agents to improve themselves through e-Learning. These are usually merged with a Quiz that an agent would take to assess their level of knowledge. This is useful for teaching technical skills and keeping an agent’s product knowledge up to date but does little to improve the agent’s customer interaction skills. There are some new technologies that uitilizes call evaluation scores and feedback from customer surveys to generate an agent performance profile. This in turn can be used to identify specific agent weaknesses and make suggestions on areas of improvement. This can then be used to optimize the use of agent development resources. If knowledge is a weak area online knowledge systems can be suggested as a solution. If knowledge is good but tone is a problem then an interaction with a trainer may be recommended. The automation of development of the identification areas through the merging of quality assurance and customer feedback and analysis using modern statistical tools to is an exciting frontier. It must however focus on improved training resource usage rather than reducing the amount of agent training and up skill.

Workforce management can put up web screens for agents to measure themselves against numbers of contacts taken, adherence and improving their own resolution times as they mature. It can also allow them to see who is in the queue ready for taking contacts before they make a judgement move to go into research mode or whatever your classifications are for being in a "not ready state". The first time a representative listens to themselves taking a contact, they are able to start improving how they respond to customer needs. Recorded contacts are also used as training instances for new hires. Ticketing tools allow you to build knowledge by looking at other technicians/representatives answers or solutions to issues. No one needs to be there to help them search - and it allows us all to improve upon our communication skills.

Moving Up the Outsourcing Chain

Philippines being on the top of virtual contact center business, is moving up its competency to the next level to become the global leader in multilingual business process outsourcing (BPO).

The managing head of the Board of Investments Cristino Panlilio, said the agency has partnered with IBM in a bid to cash in on the Philippines’ multilingual talents as more and more companies, particularly from Europe and Asia-Pacific, expand outsourcing activities.

IBM itself will be the biggest catcher of those multilingual talents as it plans to fill in 3,000 more jobs over a one-year period. And IBM currently has 10,000 workers in the Philippines. IBM has the largest contingent of multilinguals with more than 200 local and cross-border talents supporting 15 languages, this number is expected to double in three years.

The number of local multilingual talents in the Philippines is three times the number of foreign multilingual talents and that number is growing by 8.7 percent annually. Aside from an already rich pool of multilingual talents from the BPO sector itself, the DTI said other sources of multilingual talents include the academe, government and the hospitality industry.

According to Panlilio, a training facility will be set up at the Ortigas Center. On the academic side, the partnership hopes to increase the quantity and improve the quality of graduates proficient in Nihongo, French, German and Spanish.

OFWs will be encouraged to return and practice at work the language they have learned abroad. There is also an initiative to simplify and integrate processes and policies on work permits for foreign nationals and visa applications for local talents going on knowledge-transfer abroad.

According to the project brief, there is a need to develop a research and development program focusing on multilingual capability since growth markets are in Europe and Asia Pacific. Today, multilingual talents in the Philippines mostly handle non-sales activities such as on customer services, document analysis, technical support and teaching.

Today, our local BPO business supports over one million client employees in 15 languages from Manila and provides global support to 84 countries in North and South America, Asia and EMEA, all delivered in their natural time zones. IBM’s capabilities and best practices in multilingual BPO business, coupled with strong and strategic cooperation from the BOI, will further establish the Philippines as an upcoming leader in the global multilingual BPO arena.

The Philippines continues to lead the global IT and BPO evolution with a strategic engagement with IBM that will cement the position of the country as a center of excellence in multilingual BPO. What we are witnessing is an acceleration of our country BPO industry service offerings that would help attain our industry targets of creating 1.3 million jobs and $25 billion in revenues by 2016. This is also part of BOI’s commitment to further reinforce our reputation as a preferred destination for niche BPO services.

Higher growth and more opportunities for the BPO industry in markets such as the UK. Over the past decade, the Philippine BPO industry has grown to achieve $11 billion revenues and employs close to 526,000 people. These numbers show that the industry is a major contributor to exports.

The briefing was organized by the founding members of the British Philippine Outsourcing Council and the Philippine Trade and Investment Center. The Philippines was the recipient of the Offshoring Destination of the Year Award by the UK’s National Outsourcing Association in 2007, 2009, and 2010. Britain is one the Philippines’ top markets in the European Union. Exports amounted to $395 million in 2010. Industry data also showed total investments from Britain amounting to $146 million last year.

Under the proposed Philippine Export Development Plan, services exports which include IT and BPO are expected to increase their market share to 24 percent by 2016. The British Philippine Outsourcing Council, an organization based in the United Kingdom, provides outsourced services to the Philippines.

Philippine BPO Firms Expand Social Media Services

Emerging technologies such as social media are not only changing the way people communicate, but are influencing the services offered by business process outsourcing (BPO) firms as well.

According to some BPO firms, their non-voice service offerings are slowly seeing growth. And a fair amount of non-voice BPO, such as back-office email management, chat processing, coupons processing and claims processing, among others. Social media work is also considered back-office. By helping clients in inserting experts into blogs and forums on the web, so that when there's an issue in the social media realm, we insert an expert there to resolve the issue.

Evolving BPO services

Non-voice BPO services are beginning to push the local BPO market to growth, as voice-based BPO services in the country near saturation. In April, the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) said that non-voice BPO sector has outpaced the contact center industry in 2010, as it posted a high 30-percent growth rate last year. Employing more than 100,000 professionals in this sub-sector—with many of these BPO employees coming from financial and accounting, legal, and medical sciences backgrounds. It is only in the past year that the company has started doing social media relationship management, in response to the changing landscape of consumer technologies.

Consumers today are becoming pretty demanding and expect a high degree of satisfaction, adding that consumers now expect the same level of service rendered in different kinds of channels—be it through the phone, email or social media. Putting some attention into our technology business sector, a decisioning tool was developed to help agents personalize interactions with people on other channels, so customers get the same experience no matter what channel they use.

Young workforce

This shift towards multi-channel customer service demands a new set of skills from agents, but fortunately, the current crop of workers are immersed enough in these new technologies. The younger generation of agents have familiarity with texting, chat and social media. They have wonderful multi-tasking skills, and that's important when you're going to serve customers.

Moreover, BPO clients dealing with new technologies such as smartphones and tablets call for more advanced troubleshooting skills.

Retain Motivated Entry-Level Employees

One of the most difficult challenges facing HR departments are recruiting and retaining motivated entry-level employees. This is particularly true for companies that operate virtual call centers and customer service centers. In this article I will discuss a 4-step process that will help you recruit and retain motivated entry-level employees.

Defining your job opening is the first step in recruiting motivated entry-level employees. By defining your job opening, you will be able to write a better job advertisement, which will lead to recruiting better performing employees. The questions you need to ask include: What is your company trying to accomplish with this position? What job duties will this employee perform on a daily basis? What performance level defines success in this position? What performance level defines failure in this position? What skills are required for quality job performance?

What is the personality type of an employee that will be a top performer in this position? When defining your job opening, talk to employees at your company who are top performers at this position and ask them what makes them successful at their job. Also ask them what type of person you should be looking for when recruiting new employees. Your current employees will provide you with valuable insight into both defining your job opening and in determining the type of person that will be successful at that position.

Once you have clearly defined your job opening and the traits that lead to high job performance, you are ready to write your job advertisement and start marketing it to job seekers. In order to recruit highly motivated, entry-level employees, you must write an outstanding job advertisement. Understand that the purpose of your job advertisement is to attract targeted job seekers. Your job advertisement is a marketing tool and should be written as one.

Now that you have a pool of applicants that have applied to your job advertisement, you need to determine which applicants to interview. This is the stage where most hiring mistakes are made because we still tend to hire with our heart instead of with our head. To help solve this problem, have applicants take assessment tests to test for skills and personality (i.e., personal motivation) associated with high job performance within your specific industry and job category. Assessment testing provides you with an unbiased means to filter out applicants that do not have the skills and/or personality profile necessary for high job performance. Applicants that receive high scores on assessment tests are the candidates that should be considered for interview and possible hire.

It is unfortunate, but companies do a lousy job of retaining their high performing employees. When a great employee says they are leaving, what steps do management and HR take to try and keep that person? Usually very little. Instead of asking the employee what it will take to persuade him or her to stay, and then doing what it takes to keep that employee, we start writing a job ad to find a replacement before the employee's seat is cold. Normally, what it takes to retain your high performing employee is far less expensive than recruiting and training a replacement. Therefore, do whatever it takes to retain your high performing employees.

Considering the time, effort and money involved in hiring new employees, it makes smart business sense to hire and retain motivated employees. This is especially true with entry-level positions where turnover and training costs are high as in the virtual call center industry. Motivated employees have higher job performance, they respond better to training and they remain with a company longer. This in turn increases job performance while lowering future recruiting and training costs due to lower turnover. To see the positive impact of hiring motivated employees, look at your company's star performers. I bet they all have one personality trait in common—they are all highly self-motivated.

The second part of this strategy is that once you have hired motivated employees, do everything you can to retain them. Understand that employee retention is primarily a management issue. Motivated employees stay at companies where management makes them feel good about themselves and good about the job they are doing. Compliment and reward your employees when they perform well. Tell them they are important to the success of your company. Build a career path for motivated employees and advance them within your organization because if you don't, your competitors certainly will. Realize that your company is only as good as its employees. Therefore, give your company the best opportunity for success by hiring and retaining the best people--highly motivated people.

Virtual Contact Center Supports Going Green

The virtual contact center has become important for its ability to provide organizations with significant benefits in not only cost savings but also, as more and more businesses become aware of their environmental impact and responsibilities, the virtual contact is also helping organizations go green. The e-business now prioritize going Green. This will mean decrease in the consumption of power in the data center by switching off the air conditioners at night. The call center industry has no exception. The will start to implement a Green hosted call center environment. A virtual call center allows the organization to participate in the reduction of power consumption. Call center will allow its agents to work in any place where they have access to phone and Web connection. This will result to significant reduction of physical space and vivid change on the expenses of rent and utility.

For instance, a traditional call center allocates 120 square feet of office space per agent. Commercial space rent is from $17 to $28 per square foot per year. If the cost is $21 per square foot rental, the cost per year per agent equates to $2,500, or $250,000 per 100-seat call center. Assuming the utility costs is around $30,000 per year and the possible savings in a hosted environment are extensive. Also, the virtual contact center can allow organizations to extend their service hours and offer improved customer service levels as callers are better able to reach agents and are connected directly to agents who can assist them with their needs quickly and efficiently.

Aside from these abilities, the virtual contact center becomes important to organizations looking to go green as the agents they employ are home, not commuting and releasing more carbon emissions or using electricity, fuel or other costly elements of a brick and mortar establishment. By reducing the organizations carbon footprint, the virtual contact center has huge benefits on the environment including a significantly reduced carbon footprint and removing pollution from the air. The Green concept has been over hyped in a number of industries, and call center industry is now starting to enjoy measurable benefits that go beyond by merely giving satisfaction to the environment. By implementing a hosted platform that eliminates the need for a physical building, the organization will then save funds, will trim down power consumption and will force an improved overall experience for everyone concerned.

Generating and Improving BPO Jobs

Knowing that a huge population of the graduating students are in the field of IT, it seems that there will be another group of overqualified graduates who will be engaged in call center. So at present, the BPO industry is a sure alternative for employment opportunity for the newly grads. Since we have a low-cost labor here, most BPO firms have decided to hire a cheaper workforce than losing a business. It's depressing that we're losing jobs, not just here in our country and we know it also happens worldwide. But due to the strength of the BPO industry, it is not a lost for our employees and graduates.K

Most of the new employment opportunities in BPO industry worldwide were created in the Philippines during the last month. This has, in effect, made the Philippines the fasted emerging BPO service hub globally. Industry expert says that altogether there 25,700 new job opportunities were created in the business process outsourcing sector in the Philippines. Among these new jobs, as many as 72 per cent were based in the Philippines, he added. It may be noted that the BPO industry in the Philippines had created as many as 70,000 new employment opportunities during 2009, with the contact center sector having the maximum number of employees – 280,000 agents. Despite, the worldwide economic slump, the BPO industry in this far eastern nation was successful in spawning revenues to the tune of $7.2 billion during the last fiscal denoting an increase of 19 per cent in comparison to the $6.06 billion generated in revenues.

The rate of call center agents that are being hired isn't enough in the large demand of agents in different call centers. Furthermore, there is an estimated 20,000 new jobs per month and on 2010 it will contribute $13 Billion to the economy. However, there are few qualified job applicants. There is only 4% of applicants are hired of call centers. 40,000 fresh college graduates have sub-standard English skills, because of this; Agents' competence must be enhanced to meet the higher demand for new employees of call centers.

There are three strategies for this shortfall: First, industry lead standards are being developed and shared. TESDA and CHED have signed the memorandum of agreement for a good curriculum about call center in all pilot schools. Second, government is supporting training for new-hires. P350 million worth of scholarship grants have been given by TESDA for the training of would be-agents. Lastly, partnerships between academe and companies are being formed. This strategy must helped schools to modernize the curriculum based on the needs of call center development. Also, on-the-job training is relevant in this strategy. Indeed, the three strategies must be done successfully and effectively to sustain the needs of call center on having enough employees.