What you need: English speakers. Small business owners in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and other English-speaking nations may have some concerns about venturing abroad for an English-speaking service. Obviously, it’s necessary for service providers to be understood not just by their employers but also by the target market. Fortunately, English is no longer limited to North America, parts Europe, or Australia. The whole world speaks the language now, and plenty of foreigners are able to speak English just as well—in some instances, even better—than a native speaker would.

Fact: The Philippines, is the third largest English speaking country in the world. Educational institutions use the language from an early age, breeding a country that is ideal for foreign businesses. Filipinos are also able to imitate a wide variety of accents—or appear accent neutral—which is a valuable trait in when choosing answering service providers.

What you need: Low costs. There is one rule that applies to all businesses: earn more, spend less. One cannot guarantee success without heeding this rule. The more a company saves money, the bigger an eventual profit is (or will be). As long as quality isn’t compromised, it is always a good thing to go for the more affordable alternative. Whatever areas you can tighten your belts on, do it. When you’re a small business, every little bit—each dollar saved—helps infinitely.

Fact: Asia, and the Philippines specifically, is more cost effective than most parts of the world. From living expenses to office spaces to employee salaries, doing business in Asia will all add up to a much smaller sum than you will find yourself spending in the USA or Canada. Expanding your business internationally may sound expensive or risky, but it’s not. Hiring an answering service in the Philippines is no different than hiring an answering service locally except for the fact that it’s cheaper to set it up abroad thanks to advancements in the Internet and VOIP services like Skype.

What you need: Quality AND quantity. Individuals often place one over the other, but actually one needs both when employing a company or individuals. Excellent service is extremely important, but you also need to be certain that there are plenty of able workers to hire if you decide to scale up your operation. There’s no use creating a good place of work when there is no one to hire… or at least no one who is up to your standards.

Fact: You can have both quality and quantity in the Philippines. There are thousands of college graduates in the archipelago each year, and the small country has a finite number of jobs to offer. As a result, many foreign businesses are welcome here—and they are granted access to thousands of educated English-speakers who are qualified and willing to work for a reasonable salary.

Sure, it is possible to find one or two of these necessities elsewhere. But there is a reason why online answering businesses are booming in the Philippines: because here, you can have it all.

Location
One thing to keep in mind is that there is no need to limit yourself with your location. The first instinct for any person looking for an answering service is to immediately look nearby. In this case however, there is no need to be so restricting. Globalization and technology have eliminated borders between countries, so it’s just as easy to hire someone overseas as it is to do so in your own hometown. Furthermore, costs in certain countries are considerably lower, and the quality is on par with what you would find locally. The Philippines for example has seen a huge surge in the answering service business because of the low cost and high quality that service companies located there offer.

Speaking the language
Whether in your own backyard or on the other side of the globe, there are several characteristics one should seek in good answering service companies. A primary concern in a communication-based job is that the employees are adept at the language of the company’s choice, which is almost always English. These days, practically the whole world can understand and speak some level of English, but it’s essential that agents answering the phone and representing your company be very fluent and accent neutral so they appear trustworthy and credible to clients on the other end of the line.  This is another area where the Philippines excels. Philippines based answering service companies offer accent neutrality classes that reduce the already minimal local accent, making it indistinguishable to the caller that your company’s answering service is actually overseas.

Trained to deliver
Of course, one doesn’t stop at mastery of the basic language. If you’re aiming for success, find an answering service provider that has a well-educated staff. Company training goes a long way in developing quality employees. Since employees will be in constant communication with clients, they will represent your company – and of course you want them to represent you well.

Client-centric
Since this type of work deals with a lot of interpersonal relations, it is vital to make customer service an integral part of your operation. The objective of using an answering service is to be able to communicate with the clients directly after all. Find a company that always places your customers’ best interests as their top priority.  Many businesses’ downfall lies in forgetting that taking care of the customer will result in them taking care of you directly or indirectly.

Pleasantries
Part of taking care of clients is treating them well and making them feel at ease. That being said, a good call center company knows how to genuinely charm and please clients. Respect is of utmost importance, and there may be times that it is necessary to appease and calm down angry or irritate callers. It may therefore be best to find a company that has individuals skilled in the art of conversation and telephone etiquette—or at least appropriately briefs their employees on these values.

Recognizing the value that an answering service can offer your business is the first step to making your business more efficient and freeing up your time, but it is far from the last. Think long and hard about the company you want to hire. One more tip: do not be afraid to venture far for a great alternative. Southeast Asian countries tend to have it all, without the hefty price. The Philippines in particular, is a good balance of affordability, top-notch service plus a massive pool of young, English-speaking individuals ready and willing to be employed. This way, investing to improve your business need not drain you of all your money.

Whether you’re a small entrepreneurial venture based out of your kitchen table or you’re a large Fortune 500 firm, we can help find a solution that’s right for you. Call Center Philippines provides you with useful information that can help guide you on all the aspects of establishing or using call center services in the Philippines at the lowest possible cost while simultaneously maintaining strong customer satisfaction and seamless integration into your company’s existing workflow.

Our website is full of helpful articles that will assist you in identifying a call center solution that’s right for you. Of course, reading helpful information on our website is just the first step in using Call Center Philippines. To take the first step in using a call center in the Philippines, you may also want to speak with us or perhaps even stop by to conduct a site visit for yourself. We can help with this too.

Call Center Philippines has formed partnerships with the top call centers and outsourcing providers in the Philippines. If you’d like more information from our trusted partners, or you simply know that you need help with your business but aren’t sure where to start, just fill out the form on the left and one of our representatives will get back to you within 24 hours to conduct a risk free and no cost needs assessment to determine how we can help you. We often find that even the most established companies need assistance navigating the best way to set up or use a Philippines call center.

With over 10 years of experience in outsourcing and offices in both the U.S. and Manila, Call Center Philippines has an extremely well established network of reliable vendors that can help meet all of your call center needs. It’s also worth noting that in addition to call center services, we can also help you in identifying resources for outsourcing your:

• Live web chat
• Website Design and Programming
• Customer Support
• Email Response
• Upsell Services
• Back Office Accounting
• Link Building
• And much much more…

Simply fill out the form on the left and tell us what you’re looking for. We’ll be sure to call you back within 24 hours to conduct a needs assessment and offer a variety of viable options.

Whether your business is just getting started or you are a large multinational corporation, using a Philippines call center can increase your company’s productivity and significantly lower costs.

The Philippines is one of the top nations for outsourcing because in addition to offering a lower cost structure than most other countries, it offers an overall exceptional environment for doing business. For example, the Philippines is the third largest English speaking country in the world, has a culture is largely considered to be one of the most aligned to that of the United States, offers a large talent pool of motivated and educated residents, and has a strong technological infrastructure.

Find out how you can increase your efficiency with a tailor made call center or other outsourcing solutions that fit your budget and meet your needs by filling out the form on the left or by completing the form on our Contact Us page. If you are tired of spending too much on a domestic call center, or if the phone is ringing off the hook and distracting you from doing business, contact us today and see how much the Philippines can do for you.

We look forward to speaking with you!

While Call Centers in the Philippines still provide businesses with call center support, such as live account help, customer technical assistance and telemarketing, BPO services in the Philippines now have a wide variety of different services designed to meet the needs of any company. Everything from website design to software development can be outsourced to a Philippine provider. Social media networking, mobile application development, search engine optimization and search engine marketing are just some of the web services BPO companies in the Philippines provide. Technical support experts monitor servers and security for a business at an off-site location and provide remote assistance on demand. Call services and technical support offered twenty-four hours a day allows a business to always remain open to customers, even if its physical locations are closed.

Businesses can outsource time-consuming office duties, such as data entry, data processing, bookkeeping, new employee recruitment and routine human resource tasks. Remote virtual assistants help employees with administrative tasks, such as supply ordering, inventory monitoring and even appointment scheduling. Both employees and the employer benefit from the outsourcing of routine but necessary administrative and clerical tasks. Employees focus solely on their core work instead of wasting time on basic office work. Employers save money, lower employee stress levels and are free to use employees more efficiently.

Business process outsourcing also allows a company to connect with different kinds of creative experts. Outsourced creative services include editing, content writing, animation, graphic design and print design. Three-dimensional design, used in game development, films and for architectural design, is a rapidly growing field in the Philippines. If a company has a forum for its customer base or a popular product, outsourcing forum moderation ensures the forum remains a civil place and leaves a good impression on any visitors.

A common concern among businesses considering outsourcing is whether customers will be able to get the service they need from a staff in another country. However, technology makes it possible for outsourced employees to help clients no matter where they are, and the Filipino people are known for their English fluency and accent-neutral speech.

To get more information about how you can use call center outsourcing in the Philippines or any other type of outsourcing services, visit our contact us page and fill out our short form to tell us more about your business needs.

Before examining some of the advantages of using a call center in the Philippines, let’s first do a quick review of the call center industry for those that may be less familiar with it. Call centers began to appear commercially in the 1960s, and their availability has expanded many times over the last forty years. A call center is a centralized office used for processing large numbers of customer interactions by telephone. Calls are both incoming, meaning placed by a customer and received by the call center, and outgoing, meaning placed by the call center and received by a customer. These customer interactions are made for a variety of purposes, including product support, information gathering by customers, technical support, and sales or telemarketing. Where the volume of customer telephone calls is large, a call center may be the most effective method of call handling, providing improved call handling by telephone agents, as well as an improved customer service experience. Telemarketing effectiveness is also often enhanced with the use of a call center. Users of call centers include utility companies, financial services companies and debt collectors, mail order sellers, online retailers, entrepreneurs, and more.

More and more, call center operators in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and other western countries are utilizing offshore call center services. This began in the 1980s when only simple customer response services were offered, but offshore call center services have become highly sophisticated, extending even to high level technical support. The advantage to the operator is often largely in cost of operations, since a primary cost in call center operations is labor, and labor costs offshore are often lower. Needless to say, attractive offshore providers of call center services are often found in developing countries, where rates of pay are significantly lower than in first world countries. Among these countries are India and the Philippines. Both of these countries have strongly burgeoning call center industries, with many call center providers in operation.

There are more than two hundred call centers presently operating in the Philippines. The Philippines is a strongly preferred offshore call center source for a number of reasons. Primary among these is language skills normally utilized by an operator at a call center in the Philippines. The Philippines is the world’s third largest English-speaking country, after only the United States and Great Britain. English is a primary language in the Philippines, and natives commonly speak English with no accent or regional inflection. People in the Philippines are also familiar with and versed in western culture, including especially that of the United States. The Philippines was an American territory early in the twentieth century, and was a strong American World War II ally. A common objection to having contact with an offshore call center heard from customers is that operators spoken to sound foreign due to speech and language. This is largely ameliorated with the use of Filipino call centers.

The Philippines offers great cost-cutting advantages to western call center operators. Typical wages for Filipino workers approach $4,000 per year. This is versus the common $30,000 to $40,000 per year in the United States. An operator at a call center in the Philippines will be employed at a substantial cost savings.

At the same time, reliability and quality of call center workers in the Philippines is in no way sacrificed just to achieve these cost savings. Employee turnover, for instance, is markedly low in the Philippines. Whereas in the United States call center turnover rates commonly approach fifty percent, in the Philippines it is often less than ten percent. The cost of rehiring and retraining call center staff is therefore significantly lower when using a call center in the Philippines.

The literacy rate in the Philippines is also very impressive, at above ninety percent. The Filipino population is very well educated, with more than 2,000,000 people per year graduating from high school and more than 400,000 people per year completing college educations. Education in the Philippines is prized, with many people participating even in ongoing post-graduate education.

The business climate in the Philippines largely mirrors that of the United States. American business practices and accounting and legal principals and systems are widely employed. Contributions to these principals and systems are regularly made by Filipino practitioners. The regulatory environment follows this familiarity, too, with American and western practices favored and protected by Filipino laws.

For these reasons and others, the Philippines has rapidly become one of the most highly sought after locations for western call center operators. The Philippines was even named the Offshoring Destination of the Year in 2007, 2009 and 2010 by the United Kingdom “National Outsourcing Association.” Growth and development of the industry continue in the Philippines, and the country is open to ongoing challenges and advancement.

If you’re interested in using the services of a Philippines call center, simply fill out the form on the left and one of our representatives will contact you to get an understanding of your needs and then offer you free introduction to a recommended partner.

We look forward to speaking with you!

Employee Cost Reduction

One of the most important advantages to outsourcing in the Philippines is the cost savings a company can experience. Recruiting and training new employees locally can be costly, along with the additional salary and benefits that must be considered before increasing staff. It is considerably less expensive to hire employees in the Philippines as compared to hiring them locally. As such, one of the most controversial aspects of outsourcing is that some individuals believe that outsourcing in the Philippines, or other nations for that matter, takes away local jobs by shifting them to lower cost countries. The reality however is that less than 300,000 of the over 2 million jobs that were lost over the past few years were directly related to outsourcing.

A better way to look at outsourcing in the Philippines is that it allows a company to hire local employees to focus on the main purpose of the business while using Filipino staff to focus on other administrative duties. Put simply, outsourcing allows companies to focus their limited resources more effectively.

Capital Costs

Another benefit to outsourcing in the Philippines is that there is no need to purchase additional equipment necessary to perform routine administrative functions. For example, Philippines call centers, which make up a large part of outsourcing in the Philippines, are experts in the field they specialize in and already offer the most up-to-date equipment necessary to perform specialized tasks. For the small or family owned business, this offers considerable cost savings in regard to capital outlay for equipment necessary.

Technology

Technology is ever-changing and for this reason, many small or family run businesses struggle with the costs involved in keeping computer equipment and programs up-to-date. Philippines outsourcing offers businesses the most current technological equipment without requiring the company to invest significant funds into purchasing the equipment.

Administrative Tasks and Outsourcing

Much of the negativity regarding outsourcing has to do with customer service, but by using a Philippines call center to handle bookkeeping, inventory control or other behind-the-scenes tasks, customer service should not be affected. Customers will not care who handles your inventory control or where your payroll is computed. Outsourcing administrative duties is one of the best ways to use outsourcing and your company may find that customer service improves as in-house staff are able to focus on the customer.

Things to Consider

Communication is the key to choosing the right Philippines call center or other type of outsourcing partner. With many outsourcing companies, the sales team might be extremely enthusiastic regarding what problems they can correct within your company and how their services can reduce costs and improve customer service. However, once the contract is signed, there may be a disconnect between what the outsourcing partners sales team promised and what the implementation team can deliver. For this reason, communication is critical to guaranteeing that the Philippines outsourcing company understands your company needs and what is expected of them during the contract period.

With due diligence, your company can experience significant cost savings and improved customer service using outsourcing. Clear communication, thorough research and proper handling of staff concerns regarding the outsourcing will lead to an outsourcing relationship that can benefit small and family run businesses for many years.