Cebu, Philippines: The New Call Center King

Cebu's Call Center Industry, as covered by CNN.

Call Center 101: Stay Healthy and Successful

Working as an agent in a call center in BPO Philippines can be stressful. There are health concerns with the change of lifestyle that comes with the job: working the night shift, sleeping through the day, receiving verbal abuse from some angry callers, demands to perform well and meet quota… Some people thrive on these crisis-like situations while others just burn out. 

Here are some simple tips on how to keep healthy and pace yourself at work, ensuring your job performance and security as a call center agent.

Do you have it takes to make good SEO?

This age is the Internet society, where individuals, groups and organizations have an online presence such as websites, web pages and accounts on social networks.

With potentially millions of websites and pages establish in the Internet, search engines like Yahoo!, Google and Bing are a necessity to find and identify these sites. To improve a website's visibility or 'presence' online via these search engines is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Nurses in BPO Philippines

Today in the Philippines, there are thousands of nursing graduates fresh from their licensure exams try their luck to land employment most especially in countries abroad such as the United States.

Unfortunately, their job applications are rejected locally and abroad. Simply because local and international hospitals cannot afford to hire new nurses due to budget cuts. Hospitals are establishments that are also affected by the global financial crisis.

Learn the Language of BPO

Many worthy job applicants lose out on promising career opportunities or promotions in the workplace because of their weak communication skills, particularly in the English language which is the language of communication in business process outsourcing (BPO).

The Philippines is known for its population of capable English speakers

Be the Outstanding One out of Five!

Surveys report that 20 percent of job seekers who apply to a company in BPO Philippines get noticed in interviews and proceed through the screening process. Twenty percent!

1 out 5 applicants are considered for the job!

To get an advantage over the rest, you have to know how to promote yourself as part of your strategy to secure a job or get hired on the spot.

What it takes to be a Professional Call Center Agent…

To be a valuable employee of a call center in BPO Philippines, to be a competent agent, skills are important. To achieve good skills takes a lot of training as a decent voice, accent and speak isn't just enough. It's only one part of being a capable, full time call center agent.

The Job Search: Roel's Story.

Roel woke to the soft smell of hot oil frying sweet pork. Daylight was warm through his bedroom window. The young man sat up in bed, his eyes blank from a deep sleep that felt like decades.

Roel stared out until a thought registers in his head that today is the first day of his life as a graduate.

No more heading over to the campus. No more classes, textbooks, exams and projects. It's all behind him now, ahead lies his future of what he would make of it.

Roel placed his two feet on the floor and rose from bed. I must find a job, Roel thought.

BPO Philippines 101

What is BPO?

BPO are initial letters that mean "Business Process Outsourcing". Business Process Outsourcing is where some operations or activities of a business is assigned out to a third-party who handles these activities as a service for a contractual fee. The third party is known as a "service provider". This is usually done to minimize cost of operations in acquiring qualified staff, facilities and equipment, since the service provider supplies these to client companies.

Usual business operations/activities that get outsourced are customer care/support, marketing, research and data entry among others. These functions are categorized as back-office (internal company functions such as finance & accounting, human resources, legal etc.) and front-office (which includes customer related functions, such as billing, marketing & promotions, customer service & support).

BPO is an emerged industry in the Philippines as international companies send back-office and front-office work to service providers based in the country. The Philippines is less expensive when it comes to operational and labor costs. The workforce in the country also is attractive for being competent English speakers who are exposed and accustomed to a Western culture, with a progressive growth in technical and innovative skills.

The Philippines remains to be a top destination for the worldwide business process outsourcing industry, serving client companies in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia.

BPO Philippines is a dynamic environment for socio-economic progress, being a leading source of employment. In 2010, BPO Philippines provided employment to 640,000 Filipinos nationwide. There are over 800 call centers in 20 key locations, including in Mindanao. Most are located in Metro Manila and Cebu, and in regional areas.


What is a Call Center?

Being the most common BPO service, call centers are where call center agents handle sales, customer service, and technical support calls.

A call center is a facility that receives and transmits a large volume of requests, originally by telephone but these days even through faxes, e-mail and live chat. Many businesses use call centers to interact with customers, to administer product support or provide information for customers inquiries, telemarketing and debt collection.

Calls can be categorized as either 'inbound' or 'outbound'. Inbound calls are made by customers calling in/to the call center, usually requesting for information regarding a product or service, report a malfunction or error, or request for help/assistance. Outbound calls, on the other hand, are made by agents to consumers, for research or surveys regarding service satisfaction but usually for sales purposes (tele-marketing). Most call centers offer both inbound and outbound campaigns for clients.

Call center agents are often organised into a multi-level or multi-tier support system for more efficient handling of calls.

The first level or tier consists of operators, who initially answer calls and provide general information.

If the caller requires more assistance, the call is forwarded to the second tier (in the appropriate department depending on the nature of the call). There are usally three or more tiers. Typically the third tier of support are the highly skilled technical support staff for the product or the manager/supervisor.

Call center companies comprise 80 percent of the BPO Philippines industry.

To know more about promising career opportunities, please check out BPO Jobs Philippines. You can find your future here.