Onshore, Offshore, Nearshore: The BPO Call Center Strategy

Posted on May 4, 2012 by admin

With the recent recession and economic meltdown happening in the USA and Europe, multinational companies especially those in the Fortune 500 had to take a major decision that immensely changed the fate of their businesses. Business process outsourcing had long been in effect even before the occurrence of these global crises. But on a personal note, such crises have triggered most of the multinational companies to follow the path in the outsourcing race. Thus, the term “offshore” has become a household word in the global market.

Offshore is simply an act where call center assignments are outsourced to remote destinations (other countries) where the cost of labor and manpower are decisively lower than those of the service providers in the nearshore or onshore locations. For businessman, “Location! Location! Location!” is more than a motto; it is a mantra for business success. In the case of a BPO call center business, offshoring operations and processes offers both pros and cons as the other two strategies, onshoring and nearshoring, do. Onshore or domestic outsourcing basically means that processes of a company is outsourced to a provider located within the limits of the country of that particular company. It can be costly considering labor costs, taxes and other related areas of business. Nearshore outsourcing simply means outsourcing some of the works of a company to a neighboring country.

Hence, before taking a major investment decision in outsourcing, one should proceed to asking himself or herself on where to outsource: onshore, offshore, or nearshore location. To outline the benefits and risks of the three BPO call center outsourcing strategies, they can be trimmed down into at least four criteria: cost savings, speed and schedule, expertise and quality, and execution risk. Offshoring, as mentioned above, offers companies lower labor costs (cost savings up to 50% – 70% with well-managed offshore initiatives) than doing onshore outsourcing. Nearshoring such as in Canada and Latin America may not assure investors as high cost savings as that of offshoring but it guarantees advantages such as closer cultural norms, similar time zones, and easier travel. Location plays a big role in the speed and scheduling of business processes. Expertise and quality are two other things that are subjective to the three strategies. Language and culture barrier, off course, may not be so prevalent in onshore service providers but offshore providers can also be at par as to the command of the language with their onshore counterparts and even exceed expectation as to quality. Lastly, all outsourcing projects have execution risks but they can be alleviated through effective risk management plan and management effort.

A single investment decision can totally change the course of your business. In order to achieve a positive outcome, you have to study very carefully the advantages and disadvantages of the BPO call center outsourcing strategy you want to employ and you have to consider if it fits into your project profile and objectives.

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Tips in Choosing the Right BPO or Call Center Part III

Posted on March 19, 2012 by admin

While outsourcing refers to contracting a third party to perform a specific job for your company that is supposed to be done internally for an exact period of time (referred to as SOW or statement of work), taking on a temporary personnel to take the place of an employee who is currently on maternity leave does not constitute outsourcing. BPO call center accounts that we commonly hear about are those that are sent to other countries the most popular of which are India and the Philippines. Also known as offshoring, the most familiar assignments being given to overseas BPOs include customer service, tech support, medical transcription, encoding, and programming.

so, before you decide to look for a dependable BPO call center service for your business, you have to first lay out your true reasons in outsourcing a definite task. Is there a shortage of resources in your immediate location? For example, you are trying to market a niche type of magazine subscription for engineers and in the state where you reside or where your headquarters is located, engineers are hard to come by. The next best thing to do if this is your business scenario is outsource. Another case scenario would be: There is enough supply of engineers in your area yet the cost of hiring a number of these professionals would cost tremendously more compared to contracting a BPO call center to pool people and do the rest of the marketing for you.

Outsourcing provides business owners with the kind of flexibility that is essential if they want to get ahead in the industry that they belong. When an important facet of one’s business is being handled by an external organization bound by strict measures on quality and quota, managers can focus on the other equally important aspects of the business with the luxury of not getting sidetracked by other minor issues. For example, a major credit card company hires a BPO call center to handle its collection efforts while it concentrates more in getting as many credit card members.

 

 

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Tips in Choosing the Right BPO or Call Center Part II

Posted on March 19, 2012 by admin

Tips in Choosing the Right BPO or Call Center Part III

Cont’d…

Seasonal demand is also a viable justification for business outsourcing. Some excellent examples of industries which would benefit greatly from outsourcing when their peak seasons arrive include floral businesses (amazingly over the roof sales during the Valentine season as well as graduation and) , tax accountants and tax software makers and sellers. Instead of hiring new employees to beef up your manpower during the peak season, it will be more cost-effective if you “job out” the extra work. With a reliable BPO call center company holding the fort for you, rest assured that you will get your surplus sales maximizing your potential to generate revenue to compensate for the lean months while avoiding the additional cost of maintaining manpower during portions of the year when they are not needed.

Some of the most common BPO call center outsourced departments of a company are security, marketing and promotion, sales, accounting, human resources, network and telecommunications, and IT functions.

Tip #2 Comprehensive Vendor Selection Process

Although time is always of the essence in getting your business process outsourced (one will never be able to accurately determine the amount of revenue not earned each day that passes by while searching for the perfect BPO call center company), selecting the appropriate vendor should entail more than picking the company with the lowest bid. A more careful form of evaluation is crucial in the vendor selection process, a decision that should be devoid of personal emotion and office politics.

First, you have to take into consideration the inputs of key personalities who will be directly involved in the outsourcing plan. From this group, you should assemble a team for the purpose of evaluation. The group’s role is to define the product or the service to be outsourced and its technical requirements. At the same time, the same group should also identify the vendor requirements and put all their findings into writing. Once the prerequisites have been identified and itemized, the vendor search process can now commence.

 

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Tips in Choosing the Right BPO or Call Center

Posted on March 19, 2012 by admin

Tips in Choosing the Right BPO or Call Center Part I

With the vast selection on BPOs and call centers all over the world, selecting the most appropriate BPO organization for your business is not only a complex but a tricky task as well. The success in having a portion of your business outsourced relies heavily on how skillfully manage the outsourcing process prior to and after the contract has been signed. Do not allow yourself to fall into the old pit trap of awarding your outsourcing contract to the lowest bidder which many companies have become victims of. Conduct a thorough and comprehensive BPO vendor selection program. Making the wrong choice in your BPO outsourcing selection process will result in bad customer service, late and missed deliveries, serious issues in call handling quality, and/or increasing statistics of lost opportunities, low sales, and dropped calls. When the stats are reeled in, blames are going to be thrown here and there and you will still end up the loser with diminished popularity and respect from your customers.

Tip #1 Know Your Reasons and Goals on Why you Want to Hire a BPO Firm

Keep in mind that a BPO call center is supposed to add value to your business and you are not hiring them to solve a business issue for you. If you have an inherently poor business process, having it outsourced may only make matters worse. To simplify things, let us all try to understand what outsourcing is all about. You have a lot of business operations all going on at the same time. Some of these operations have been in practice by a specific segment of the company for quite some time. This section of the company that I am pertaining has been hired to carry out other tasks alongside a particular job or they have been specifically hired to perform a singular function. After careful evaluation, you finally decided that that it would be best to hire an external group to do this special task for you. Instead of having the job acted upon internally, you had it contracted to an outside entity for a specified period of time. This practice is called outsourcing, and the company who takes in the job for you is called a BPO call center company.

 

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The Future: The Global Knowledge Economy

Posted on December 21, 2011 by admin

The permeating shape that contemporary economies have assumed today is deemed as both “global” and “knowledge-based.” Thus, any contemporary economic venture could only do well if it effectively harnesses its intangible resources (such as knowledge, competencies, and innovative human propensities) as springboards for a competitive lead in the race towards economic progress.

As expected, both developed and developing nations have taken part in coping with the demands of this knowledge economy. In the past decade, over 40% of the European labor market belonged to knowledge-based sectors, specializing in research and skills-based industries. In Asia, countries have also taken great strides in exploiting the economic rewards of the information age; China focused on Research and Development while India and the Philippines lavished from exemplary GDP growth paved for by the ICT and Business Process Outsourcing service industries.

With this picture, the so called “knowledge workers” are expected to take the lead in the labor market. As such, all economies must arm themselves of the requisite skills base so as to aggressively tap into this emerging economy and promptly address recurring employment challenges.

This vision is only possible if urgent and innovative strategies are taken in lieu of providing the suitable workforce that can function in the industry. In that regard, the challenges of quality education readily surfaces as perennial. Considering that all knowledge investments are vital to long-term progress, this demand to reify quality education is potential for lasting economic growth. Developed economies already profit from this investment. With an already established knowledge sector that stands as prominent and respected, developed countries such as the UK and other European nations (including Denmark, Finland, and Sweden among others) now reap the generous economic rewards of this expanding knowledge economy.

In developing countries, however, the challenge remains beckoning. In the Philippines, for example, the need to restructure its education sector commands urgency and political will. Being the only country with a 10-year basic education curriculum, the country suffered from a striking mismatch of competencies between what the labor market demands and what the education sector provides; thus, for years, the country faced painstaking employment dilemmas.

Today, as the country’s government struggles for an educational reform with its 12-year basic education program (K-12 program) being gradually implemented, the country slowly crawls its way through the global race for the top knowledge service sector economy. Moreover, at the onset of the countries venture into Business Process Outsourcing, a fairly new yet a proven profitable sector in the knowledge industry  (the Philippines has been crowned as the new call center king overtaking India), can potentially cope with the global economic demands of today.

In retrospect, the vision of a knowledge economy saving the global market from the “bust and boom” that has continually plagued its fragile structure is not at all absurd. With knowledge as its rudder, all economies can readily sail through all imaginable recessions and crisis.

 

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Is BPO Obsolete? – The BPO-KPO Debate

Posted on August 22, 2011 by admin

Due to the evolution of technology and the discovery of new forms of service areas, many fear that the most basic form of outsourcing will eventually become irrelevant in today’s service-oriented business society. There is a more advanced form of process outsourcing that is stealing the show from the former star.

So many new services are cropping out ever since people discovered the multidimensional nature of outsourcing and how it can permeate through any profession.  In the past, for instance, outsourcing services that require extensive knowledge and expertise seem preposterous. You must be there to submit physical documents and ascertain that these technocrats are actually being productive. However, that was a past where computers were confined to ‘computing’ functions and had not yet reached their present cross-cutting characteristics. So when computers began to evolve a notch higher, becoming more complicated, so did the possibility of outsourcing.

Business process outsourcing (BPO) became a household name at the turn of the 21st century, but its first expressions were already in place through offshore manufacturing firms in China, India, and other sleeping giants in the continent of Asia. A lot of machinery, equipment, and processed goods had spare parts made in these countries even if the whole product itself was patented in the United States or in Europe. BPO was essentially derived from this set-up but it took up an entirely different form – one that can be made possible only through the wonders of computer technology and the Internet phenomenon.

Known BPO services constitute, among others, simple frontline services, which, despite their simplicity, are very much necessary to make businesses thrive. Call centers are the bulwark of these BPO services as they have contributed to the growth of the industry over the years. BPO call center jobs like outbound telemarketers, inbound customer service representatives, appointment setters, and technical support representatives have surfaced into the mainstream employment sectors, especially in developing countries whose call center service packages are friendlier to Western investors.  Transcription and data entry have also emerged in the wake of this BPO revolution. On a more humanitarian note, the establishment of BPO call centers has increased employment rates in several developing countries, allowing them to experience working in a technology-driven industry and earn industry-grade wages.

But for all its advantages, many supporters of BPO innovation are alarmed by nihilistic prophecies that BPO will soon lose its place in this globalized world, and in its stead will be the flourishing of a more profound, more knowledge-based type of outsourcing. Better known as “knowledge process outsourcing (KPO),” services that come under this bracket have gained more and more popularity in the recent years. KPO services include, to wit, jobs in the accounting and finance, information technology, web design and graphics, health care, research and copywriting, and human resource industries. Administrative jobs and basically any technical job at the back office are also covered by KPO.

With the entrance of KPO into this technology-driven world, where does that leave BPO? There is actually no controversy if you look at it in a consensual point of view. BPO can actually work side by side with KPO, allowing both facets of outsourcing to simultaneously grow and mutually promote each other. If BPO is less complicated and more frontal, KPO on one hand is very complicated and tends to specialize in backoffice operations. They complement each other, and the absence of one may likely put firms with outsourcing projects in a state of imbalance.

BPO or KPO – it is a no-contest, because they are essentially different. Thus, neither one’s existence will cancel out the other’s. Both BPO and KPO are able to push outsourcing in general to greater heights, helping it achieve mainstream success in the realm of transnational and international commerce. Thanks to BPO and KPO, goods and services have been able to circulate across countries without costing them more than they could chew. They have presented viable alternatives to time and money-consuming processes that only suck dry a business’ potential for success.

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Applying to a BPO Call Center: Possible Questions during Job Interview

Posted on July 28, 2011 by admin

Since business process outsourcing (BPO) call center jobs are quite in-demand these days, applicants must prepare themselves for whatever challenges companies might throw at them. Of all these challenges, however, interviews seem to be the most intimidating. Unless you got the questions right and satisfied the one interviewing you, then you will not have a spot in the BPO call center you were hoping to get into. So the appropriate direction to take before sending your application to the BPO call center/s of your choice is to research and anticipate likely questions the human resource personnel might be asking during the interview. If you are able to do so, you may be able to pass both initial and final interview with flying colors. Here are just a few of possible questions:

What made you decide to work for the BPO/call center industry?

  • One of the things you absolutely should not do is confide to your interviewer that what attracted you in the first place is the fact that BPO call centers have bigger payouts compared to companies in other industries. Never ever raise any concern related to finances. For instance, the posh lifestyle BPO can provide which you would like to experience. The interviewer might think that you are only after the money and do not really have genuine passion when it comes to the job. Rather you should focus on marketing your capabilities, selling yourself as a possible employee and what skills you have that might be of use to the company or make you suitable to the job.
  • It would also be an advantage to know more about the BPO call center industry, cite some pertinent statistics on its growth and size, or quote what a famous intellectual said to reinforce your advantage. This will give the interviewer the impression that you are sincerely interested in working for the industry and not for whatever financial benefits you might reap.
  • Your response could be:

“The continuous growth of BPO/call centers over the years made me decide to have a career in the industry. Mr. XX, CEO of XX, said that the BPO/call center industry is going to grow five times its current size in the next ten years. The nature of BPO work enables individuals like me to maximize my potentials. Personality-wise, I am outgoing, adaptable and disciplined. I enjoy interacting with different people and communicating through the English language has since been one of my strengths.  Working for the industry will be a good education for me. I want to learn more and enhance my present skills so that I can use it for the betterment of my career.”

So you have no problems working in shifting schedules?

  • Always reply that you have no problem doing so, and that you are amenable to working graveyard shifts too. If you did your homework and researched about the BPO/call center industry, then you would have already understood that there is no fixed schedule for call center agents and other BPO employees for that matter. This question is a given since BPO basically serves various foreign clients situated in different time zones and if you intend to be part of the BPO/call center workforce, you are expected to adjust to this setting.
  • If you happen to have no previous call center experience or any other experience where you had to work in varying shifts, then the interviewer may question your ability to adapt to swing shifts. You should honestly tell him/her that although you may have difficulties at first, in time your body will be able to get the hang of it. Cite some examples if you have some, but the important thing is that you show your earnestness and that it is important for you to work in a BPO call center, regardless of the schedule. Praise your ability to adapt without overdoing it and provide enough conviction into the words you utter so as to convince the interviewer.

How confident are you in your communication skills and in your ability to convince people?

  • Always say positive things whenever you are asked this question and never relay any information that might lead to your own dishonor before the person who interviewed you. Always say that you can, and again, affect that conviction. Convince the interviewer that you can convince. If you can answer this segment without so much as inflicting doubt, then the interviewer will already take the initiative to endorse you either to the next level or immediately to the production floor (this depends on the established hiring system). Interviewers will gauge you based on your answer and once you convince them, fully aware of the impact of your words, a lot of them will see to it that you will have a career in the BPO call center industry.
  • Of course, just make sure that prior to the application you already have a good command of the English language, be it written or oral. Although if you have had chosen a BPO call center, the emphasis is more on your ability to speak English than to write it. So it would be appalling to say “I’m very confident with my communication skills,” yet everyone who hears the way you speak can beg to disagree. Make sure your claims are well-founded and that you are not just bluffing. There is no way to convince the interviewer if there is sufficient evidence in your grammar and in your diction that you are not as good as you claim to be.

Interviewers also ask the usual “How do you see yourself in xx years from now?” or say “Tell me about yourself that is not in your resume.” Remember to always stay focused and never lose track of the industry you are applying for. You should therefore say something relevant and mean it, such as you can see yourself still working in the BPO/call center industry until that time. Never show indecision. If you are indeed undecided, be tactful about it. Perhaps you could say you “want to concentrate on the present and do well to remain in the industry until xx years from now.” As for the more personal question, just briefly mention your personal and educational backgrounds. Zoom in on to traits and capabilities that are connected and useful to the job. If you have relevant experiences, mentioning them would be an added bonus. From time to time, interviewers may also ask which account or campaign in the BPO call center you are most interested in.

Years of experience have taught these interviewers to never buy appeals to pity, appeals to emotions and other fallacious tactics applicants usually employ just to get hired. When you go to a job interview, it is good to be yourself without having to cross the boundaries of professionalism. Sincerity combined with subtle but clear enthusiasm is one of the things most interviewers are partial to. A word of further advice before taking what I enumerated earlier into consideration: if you want to work for the BPO/call center industry, make sure you pass all the necessary qualifications first. Tests are a different matter altogether, but study if you must. Moreover, at least polish your grammar and diction whenever you speak English so the interviewer will not regard you as a bluff.

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If you plan to apply for a job at or outsource your business processes to a competent BPO firm here in the Philippines, we highly recommend eBusiness BPO Inc., a trusted outsourcing firm that offers services like back-end office management, virtual assistance, accounting, IT services, call center seat leasing and the like. For more information and inquiries, you may visit the corporate websitehttp://www.ebusinessbpo.com. You may also call 1.866.583.2811 (US Toll Free) or email us at support@ebusinessbpo.com.

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SEO Call Centers in the BPO Industry

Posted on July 13, 2011 by admin

Once your business learns to master the art of search engine optimization, calls will inevitably bombard your phone. Make sure that when this happens, you have an SEO call center to address the concerns of your callers as this is an indication that your business has gained enough exposure and has piqued the interest of other individuals. Also ensure that in putting up an SEO call center you hire the right mix of agents who can plug your services or answer any and all of the customer queries. A SEO call center is a new form of business process outsourcing (BPO) call center and among its primary goals is to provide solutions to individuals who want to increase their online reputation.

BPO call centers that are especially customized to handle SEO calls can handle large call volumes. They ascertain that each individual concern is managed and then resolved by another person at the end of the line. All agents dispatched to BPO call centers specializing in SEO undergo a comprehensive training that involves proper knowledge on the SEO business and methods of handling various situations diplomatically and courteously. SEO-based BPO call centers offer the following:

  • 24/7 Live Support. SEO call centers have agents that are available at all times. You can reach them either by clicking the chat support button located at websites or when you dial the toll free number of the SEO company you are interested with.
  • Undivided Attention. If anything else, call center agents are ready to provide you with the answers and solutions to customers’ questions and requests for assistance. Just relay your problems or your concerns to the agent on hand and they will not only listen to you patiently but will also do anything within their power to fix those problems or concerns in no time.

So if you need a BPO call center to close all those SEO campaign deals for you, think of putting up one now. SEO-BPO call centers provide a back-up plan for anything unexpected in your business. They help you gain more focus in your primary business functions while at the same time buffer your present income source whenever fortuitous events arise.

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Looking for an BPO call center that specializes in SEO campaigns? If you are planning to outsource your services to a competent call center here in the Philippines, we highly recommend eBusiness BPO Inc., a trusted outsourcing firm that offers services like back-end office management, virtual assistance, accounting, IT services, call center seat leasing and the like. For more information and inquiries, you may visit the corporate website http://www.ebusinessbpo.com. You may also call 1.866.583.2811 or email at support@ebusinessbpo.com

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The Power of Design and the Promise of a More Elegant BPO

Posted on July 7, 2011 by admin

We have gathered remarkable information with regard to the impact of design in the subsequent success and employee favorability of business process outsourcing (BPO) companies. There is more to the BPO business than just a name, a reputation and good financial resource. The BPO should have a strong foundation with which it could anchor itself. By foundation we do not mean some intangible concept, but rather a literal, physical structure that influences the atmosphere within. This is exactly what is lacking in several outsourcing companies, especially BPO call centers. They do no not have conducive environments to sustain much of the happiness that most agents seek.

As observed by Andy Feinour, a developer from Atlanta who has put up big-time call center offices, “Call centers were traditionally designed as sardine factories, packing people in as tightly as possible. You can only imagine what kind of service that environment engenders.” His statement is an acknowledgement that the architecture and interior design most BPO call centers adopt are detrimental to the well-being of their own workforce. If you have been to a few call centers in the vicinity, you will see that most of their workstations do sport a “sardine factory” set-up. In one row, there could be ten or so divisions wherein ten or so agents would be dialing. The worse design a BPO call center could adopt is one with back-to-back workstations that look as if agents share only one wall panel.

BPO companies are under the impression that sardine factory model is cost-efficient, because it saves up a lot of space and the stations can be used by more than one agent. But you have heard what the expert said. In your own viewpoint, what kind of service have you imagined BPO call centers engender? Do you think it looks attractive to anyone hoping to join the BPO? Feinour said that it gives all the more reason for agents to seek employment elsewhere. The real challenge for BPO call centers is to utilize a design that can induce agent satisfaction while simultaneously keep costs to a minimum and maintain efficiency.

Design must take precedence to BPOs before they start building. BPO work, especially in the call center, is highly routinary and oftentimes governed by quotas. Thus, agents and other BPO employees are exposed to high pressures. The pressure in the environment is exacerbated by bad furnishings that cause all sorts of body aches and pains. End result is compromised comfort, which may obstruct their attendance at work and cost the company a lot for that day. BPO call centers may be able to avoid such a bleak scenario by putting more value on good designs.

So what makes a good design and what does not? In the context of BPO call centers and such, good designs fulfill the following criteria:

Comfortable. Since agents spend the bulk of their working hours sitting, employers should see to it that they are given not just any chair – but one that exudes comfort and mitigates the onslaught of back or neck pains. What makes a chair particularly comfortable is not just the fluffiness of the padding. Other characteristics include a high back, an adjustable height, and some wheels to make movement fluid and not stoic. In line with this, as much as possible, workstations must also be padded so that whenever an agent leans for support during a call, they would not contract soreness due to hours and hours of leaning.

More Breathing Space. It is indeed suffocating to be just a few inches apart from your fellow agent. As you stretch, you end up hitting her shoulder or face while she is on the phone. This could be downright disastrous, whether in terms of performance or comfort. BPO call centers should provide space where their agents can have more freedom to move. Packing them up like sardines will physically and emotionally constrain them. As if the pressure of being an agent is not enough. Let them breathe for once.

Flexibility. “Adjustable work surfaces, keyboard trays, and monitor arms are also important,” said Feinour. Flexibility in the interior can very well induce a lot of agents to stay longer in a BPO call center. Although this alone is not sufficient (ideally flexibility in the nature of work must also be taken into consideration), proper furnishings and office equipments that provide physical comforts to agents would make them feel that the company is really looking after their needs. You will not be surprised that despite the metrics, some agents will still keep up with the standards. Feinour added that this level of “flexibility becomes even more essential in multi-shift operations that require agents to share workstations.”

Even just through the interior furnishings, BPO call centers should find a way to make each agent feel that they are valued and not just dispensable faces among a throng of soldiers. Because honestly, workstations these days look as if Stalin and Mao are still alive, dictating (not supervising) their agents to perform well. If they fail to do so, it would “off with her head” for them. And yet the physical environment of the office is itself a cause of discomfort. How could BPO firms expect their workers to do well if the furnishings they provided have not been utilized resourcefully?

The expert Feinour analyzed that the “intelligent use furnishings” actually has an impact on increasing BPO efficiency. Using Herman Miller’s studies, he was able to establish that “more open work environments—with their tradeoff between enhanced collaboration and reduced satisfaction with conversational privacy—are key to better performance.” This is not simply myth; there were results produced to prove his point.

A message to BPO call centers if I may: when you want to have a better, more elegant BPO, do not just stick to the basics or to traditional office models established by your predecessors. That is the problem why a lot of BPO call centers experience high turnover rates. They lack a daring to be different. They are not very bold in their designs nor are they willing enough to defy BPO customs. So long as they pursue the same path their competitors and fellow companies do, the dream of stability, and reduced staffing problems will remain a dream. Isn’t that a tad bit unsophisticated? Perhaps there is more promise for BPOs that have high tolerance for the psychedelic.

 

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The BPO Impact

Posted on June 28, 2011 by admin

Many people have praised the booming business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the country for its economic impact. However true this might be, the impact BPO has in the Philippines is felt more than just in terms of monetary gains, financial returns or an improving lifestyle. BPO’s influence actually extends to other areas that have not been given much attention.

Unbeknown to many, BPO has a palpable impact in the field of culture and in the promotion of local identity. The hiring of a local workforce fosters a kind of culture that makes people go, “Oh, he works for the BPO industry. I could tell.” These days, we are aware of that accent, that kind of swagger, and that way of life that are utterly and undeniably reflective of someone who works for a BPO firm. In the Philippines, it is easier to discern who works in the call center industry and who does not. Through the BPO, there is quite all of a sudden an outburst of the yuppie culture. You can see young professionals in just about every corner of the mall, sipping coffee at Starbucks or other coffee shops for that matter, while listening to a song in their iPod or surfing the net through some latest net book. Prior to the BPO boom, these scenarios were only limited to older, middle aged professionals, who worked even when they were outside of their office. These days, however, people frequenting the trendiest places in the country have become younger and younger.

The rise of the BPO in the Philippines has also made possible numerous technological innovations, making it possible to differentiate a BPO hub from one that is not. In fact, the creation of Information Technology (IT) parks can be attributed to the BPO. These IT parks are home to the most progressive offshore and homegrown call centers and outsourcing firms, which constitute about 90% of the residents, who are supported by the remaining 10% from the food and wellness industries. Thanks to the rise of BPO, the Philippines has become even more tech-savvy. Search Engine Optimization jobs have cropped up alongside call center agents, transcriptionists, data entry and outsourced back office workers, of which the primary purpose is to create more traffic for the firm’s own or the client’s website. Not to mention there are already a number of technical support campaigns presently catered to by the Philippine BPO and call center industry.

Of course, the BPO impact does not just end there. In a more moral and sociological sense, BPO is also responsible for capability-building. BPO is responsible for this newfound confidence in the economy brought about by more employment opportunities. It has honed Filipinos’ communications skills, among others, as well as allowed them to become more service-oriented. BPO has also brought a lot of economic incentives to struggling households, giving them the chance to uplift their downtrodden conditions and improve their quality of life.

In summary fashion, the impact of BPO is widespread. It may have its own setbacks, but overtime, it will learn from its own failings and polish its own people, system and image. Although instrumental in bringing about several changes in Philippine society – a new yuppie culture, techno hubs, economic incentives and increase workforce capability – the wear and tear of time will still bring more challenges to the industry, eventually molding it as it becomes better and better with each challenge.

 

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