A leading figure in the country’s business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry is predicting that call centers will cease to exist in 10 years.
DataOne Asia CEO Cyril Rocke said there is a possibility that the voice component of the BPO industry in the country might no longer be there in the medium term.
“In five to 10 years, it will be gone. Voice has to disappear because of the low margins in the business,” Rocke said, while adding that voice can now be replaced by new technologies that are coming out.
Rocke said there is currently a very high attrition rate among those who are working in call centers that are populated by individuals whose average age are in their mid-20s.
He said these individuals are moving from one company to another for a mere 1-percent to 3-percent increase in their salaries.
“It will not stop. They will stay with you if you add value and pay them well,” Rocke added.
Ideally, he said, salary levels in the BPO industry should be between P35,000 and P45,000, and that there should be a move already from call centers to knowledge-process outsourcing (KPO).
“It should move from voice to knowledge base. Bright minds in low-value work is destructive,” Rocke said, while citing potential high-value work for those with law, accounting, human resource and health-related backgrounds.
Rocke estimated that KPO only accounts for only 10 percent of the industry, but could potentially increase dramatically if given the right salaries and incentives.
According to Rocke, BPO remains one of the country’s sunshine industries and that, despite the increase in competition there, is ample supply for its manpower requirements.
“We just have to maintain cost-quality ratio,” he said.
Rocke said that even if China, Vietnam and India is as good as the Philippines in terms of technology, the country still has an advantage because of the Filipinos good grasp of the English language and their sense of empathy.
Projections have the country’s BPO industry to reach $26 billion in revenues this year while employing more than 1.4 million individuals.
Rocke, who has been a vice president of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, has been with DataOne since 2002. The company is the leading independent provider of managed technology services to enterprises in the country.
57 comments
Seriously? No mention of Department of Education decision to stop teaching English before high school a few years ago? THAT is why call centers will go the way of the dodo in the Philippines.
I am looking forward to BPO disappearing altogether. This is nothing but plain neo-colonialism, where white masters use the cheap labor of former colonies or 3rd world countries so they can achieve substantial savings in closing down entire departments in their home countries. It’s a double edge sword in that their deprive their own countrymen of their jobs, while countries like the Philippines augment their OFW labor exports with virtual underpaid exports of their labor force right in their own backyard. In the meantime, basic industries are neglected in favor of these BPO investments that merely local local funding sources to finance their operations. Take it from me as a former BPO Mobilization Manager at Accenture.
Tens of thousands of Filipinos employed in the BPO / call center markets, as well as most other Philippine industries which have benefited from the resulting growth in the middle class, will disagree with this ignorant statement.
Following your fallacious reductio ad absurdum reasoning, pretty much ANY job in ANY country is neo-colonialism, as a significant percentage of the buyers of most products/services are from former colonizing countries.
Stop sour graping just because you got fired from Accenture for sucking at your job, Alex.
Wrong, it is precisely low cost labor opportunists like you who enslave entire workforce in 3rd world countries with underpaid employment while they sing all the way to the bank with significant savings in their home countries. In the meantime, local industries are neglected because foreign bastards like you exploit the unemployed who would swallow your BS hook like and sinker because they have no choice. And for your information, as if it matters to ignoramuses like you, I resigned from the Accenture, because I confirmed my suspicion that it just another of those opportunist US companies who treat locals like slaves. So you know where you can stick your idiotic reasoning? Up your fundament.
Most call center and BPO employees are very grateful for having their jobs — call them slaves to their face.
You “resigned” to do freelance resume writing?? Bwahahahaha!!! Here’s a tip for guys who actually review good resumes: NO ONE resigns from a managerial job to be an unemployed bum, trying to subsist doing Word formatting. LOL!!! You are so delusional, it’s pathetic. It’s so obvious you’re just jealous of everyone else doing so well with their BPO jobs, while you scrounge around with “BPO” all over your resume, yet you can’t land a full-time job anywhere in the country. What a loser.
When I need my butt wiped, I’ll give you a ring and pay you from my well-earned BPO salary. You can use that to pay for your next meal — whenever that is.
LOSER! HAHAHAHA!!!
name calling should not be your default response, try to stay on point
Mr.Loin, always be respectful when you state your reasons and rationale on any issue(s) being discussed. Especially here in the internet forum.
Avoid name-calling and stay on point with the issue(s) being discussed !
You seemed to us readers on this forum that you are nothin but lowly paid BPO Staff toiling your butt for a few thousand pesos.
You and Alex calling the thousands of BPO workers “slaves” and saying how they are “toiling your butt for a few thousand pesos” screams of elitism and exemplifies the worst of the Crab Mentality:
– Thousands of BPO workers are grateful for their jobs, for being able to provide for themselves, for being able to better their lives
– Yet you both keep insisting on insulting them and their lives, when the jobs they do is exactly the jobs that MILLIONS of people all over the world do
– Shame on you both for trying to act like slave masters and keep your fellow Filipinos from trying to uplift their and their families’ lives
You don’t feel a need to give the same warning to Alex who is calling people bastards and ignoramus?
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So what is your development model for the Philippines? If exporting based on low cost labor is wrong what tack should developing countries take in building their economies.
No one gets rich working for others. It goes for individuals, and countries. Follow the footsteps of South Korea and Japan. They created jobs with their own industries.
They created jobs by building export industries – exactly what the Philippines is doing. Goods vs services but exports nonetheless.
yes and no. They created an strong export industry only AFTER being able to create the industries right in their own countries. Their people spent apprenticeship in the west but RETURNED to build the local industries. They reversed engineered cameras, cellphones, TV sets, cars, trucks, trains, etc. so they can do the same things at home. And only after meeting domestic demand did they venture out into exports of their SURPLUS production. NO such thing in the Philippines. Here, the people, after spending some time working locally, start dreaming of becoming OFWS, and the government exports them. They make Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China, Bahrain, etc,. become 2nd world countries. We get remittances, making labor the highest export commodity. And where do these remittances go? Into some people’s pockets.
Alex – my comments were in response to you ranting about the BPO industry – locally based export income. You have responded with a rant about OFWs.
LOL, you started the OFW thing. You responded “They created jobs by building export industries – exactly what the Philippines is doing. Goods vs services but exports nonetheless.with exports of labor as in export of goods.” Those exports are OFWs. Try again.
I never mentioned OFWs. I was referring to the BPO industry. There is no need for me to try again – I am not the one changing the argument constantly.
Oh really? Since when is BPO something you export??? Here let me quote your silly remarks again: “They created jobs by building export industries – exactly what the Philippines is doing. Goods vs services but exports nonetheless.with exports of labor as in export of goods.” LOL. Try harder.
BPO is the export of services – selling those services overseas for foreign currency. That is an export. Nothing silly about it – I do not have to try harder – I am simply telling the truth -0 you are the one coming up with nonsensical rant after rant and attacking others.
LOL, WRONG big time. check my response to your silly claims: I said “yes and no. They (Korea nd Japan) created a strong export industry only AFTER being able to create the industries right in their own countries.”
The problem is that the services you mention being exported are HIJACKED to serve other countries, and your own country lost the opportunities to benefit from those services. No industry was created, not a single business created, but your BPO has shifted the manpower resources to serve other the business of countries. Hence, the country loses in the promise.
Not a single business created? Come on – now you have entered an altogether new class of silliness. I know of a great many new companies that have been created in the Philippines as exporters of BPO services and more again that support that industry. How can you possibly claim not a single business has been created in the BPO industry in the Philippines.
LOL, Wrong reading. I said, “not a single business created without a sure 1st world client.” There is no entrepreneurial spirit taking the risk and making it big in the local market. But I should have just said no local business created. What you have are big foreign companies buidling shops here or aligning with local companies to exploit local labor to serve foreign masters. Unlike even in India, where an existing large LOCAL company Tata Consultancy has taken on the top 2 spots in BPO services with their surplus labor, what we have here are foreign businesses of former colonial masters lording it over the BPO scene, hijacking local talents to serve other countries. You have the likes of Accenture, IBM, HSBC, Convergys, Teleperformance, Telus, AIG, JPMorgan Chase, Teletech Offshore, Deutsceh Bank, etc. What industries are produced by these former colonial masters? LOL, the first sign of political and economic instability, and these companies will leave the country with 1.8 million pinoys holding the bag empty.
OK – Alex – you win. I have neither the time nor the inclination to debate a topic with someone who understands little, relies on insults and his own ludicrous definitions and a thorough ignorance of history.
Rather than wait for this supposed diaspora of employers you want to leave over a million without jobs now – go for it.
In the meantime my Philippines based company will continue to create jobs and provide export income while you rant inanely.
Yes my fault for dignifying your silly responses with a snippet of the wealth of my knowledge in BPO and colonial history. LOL. what debate? there is no debate, you already lost even before you started your post. Hone first on your understanding because all your response speak of nothing but someone with the mentality of an ignoramus slave who know nothing about global economics. Go enjoy licking your foreign masters.
Better a low paying, decent job than none at all. Fact is BPO jobs are not low paying compared to other locally available employment.
EXACTLY
now how would you employ the millions of people who’d be left jobless?….screw you…
as GDP grows, wages grow and call centre work becomes untenable – the 1st world nations will run out of places to exploit. Currently the two most exploited would have to be India (mostly back office, data entry and quite a few programming jobs) and Philippines (Call centres, data entry and some other BPO’s). The problem is that even at 6-9% GDP growth that Philippines and India are achieving, its going to take many years before these first world nations are unable to exploit India and Philippines
Labor savings were the initial drivers of BPO. Now, people outsource to access best practices developed by BPO players, so even if labor rates equalize, BPO players can offer a winning solution superior to keeping things inhouse. This is a key point you fail to see.
so, i should look forward to home based online jobs disappear?you talk neo-colonialism—what do you call those online jobs?the bottomline, people need jobs regardless of how you look at it– to pay their bills, put food in the table. I don’t think you know what you’re saying. no wonder you’re out of the BPO coz you don’t know s***t!!!
Spot on.
It’s funny how the ones who love to take potshots at successful people, who love to insult the thousands of middle-income Filipinos, are the least successful ones.
I would rather have the so-called “white masters” take advantage of the cheap labor as it brings much needed money for people who need survive on a day-to-day basis instead of that money going to other countries like India, China, Vietnam, etc. In retrospect, every country that needs to advance had to have a competitive advantage whether it be cutting edge technology or in our case, cheap labor, to attract investments. Hopefully, we can climb up the value chain and develop other industries where we can be competitive and stand out in the global arena.
What competitive advantage? Competition to be work for former colonial masters? Yes we have the advantage. If Filipinos have been quite happy for decades working for multinationals, quite happy being exported to countries as laborers, and quite happy to work in BPO getting paid a fifth of the salaries they replaced in countries of former colonial masters, I assure, you, there is no way for this country to ever “climb up and develop” its own businesses and industries.
It’s cool for you, Alex Lim, to have moved on to “better things”. Looks like it took you some time to get to where you are right now.
Maybe you’ve had quality education, toiled for a while in the BPO industry, got good breaks, and finally woke up to the “truth and reality” that you stated so eloquently.
The other part of the truth is, not many Filipinos are so fortunate as you have been. “They have no choice because the local industries are no better at all”.
The BPO industry is a good training ground; it offers jobs that allow people to gain entry and experience they need to go on to “better things”. I think having “x years in data processing/analysis/voice transcription etc.” lends considerable weight to your freelance résumé, right?
You were once an ignoramus yourself, an ass-licker for the white masters (and yes, some “brown masters” too, I suspect), participated in the “exploitation and enslavement” of skilled Filipinos.
I’ve been in the BPO industry myself for around four years and moving on to better things. I could sleep all day, go on vacation for as long as I want; I just need to check in at least once in three days for a few minutes at a time. It was made possible because of the knowledge and experience I gained from the time I spent in this industry.
Everyone has his own path to tread; everyone is at different points in their journey. Everyone is doing his best, according to the best of their current knowledge.
Respect is earned. You reap what you sow, Alex Lim.
So you think those countries would be better off without a significant export industry and that labor better off without the jobs?
(At the risk of arguing with a troll): If you look at it from a political and intellectual perspective, yes, it is neo-colonialism. And if we all came from a well-to-do family background and money is not an object, we could all take arms and just quit our decent, well-paying, puts-food-on-the-table, hard-earned “BPO” jobs and live in the mountains were no exploitative corporate establishment may come after us. IMHO sir, to most people, BPO is a blessing in disguise to those who have longed for job opportunities which could not have been possible. Yes, it’s 2017 and people already get it when they work for the BPO industry: so their employer can save money. The moment you sign that contract and NDA, you sell yourself out. It’s a CHOICE. Your idealism is laudible and I respect that, Rizal would have been proud. But now is not the time to be idealistic. This is just my take, of course. This industry has been good to me and I have reaped its benefits. To each his own. But to say BPO should be gone is like giving someone a gun to kill himself.
Yup, that is why the Philippines will never be like South Korea or Japan. It has become the land of exploitable people who are already content at the salaries they receive from former colonial masters.
sad to read so much anger in some comments…this will never solve anything or bring happiness … we should thinks to solutions and opportunites, rather then focus on problems … (even if it may be hard, just complain will never make it easier).
Unless “Beam me up, Scotty”, Star Wars and all the those dang science fiction gizmos are existing in five to ten years, the call center is not going to disappear. It may evolve and add new functions, features and skills, but five to ten? I know Cyril personally (pronounced “See-rhil”) but I can’t side with his notion of the disappearing call center. The Millennial generation may be doing things differently but the verbal side of life is not going to disappear, and not in the next five to ten years. VoIP is already here, replacing a lot of GSM and PSTN communication; so, multimedia channels will be part of the call center.
Maybe we’ll have the next generation or the next iteration in human communications in 30 to 50 years from now. By that time, we will notice very obviously the decline of VoIP, GSM and PSTN telecommunication, and should be ready to transition to the next generation of technologies.
So what you are trying to say is, your type of income is sustainable for the 1.4M working in the BPO industry? Come on man, so obvious you are not happy with your previous job, but can you give one solution how to replace the jobs of the 1.4M in the BPO?
You said you are writing papers, for who? Isn’t it bad to write thesis or academic paper for someone, or to have a degree somewhere at that cost? Your current job sounds illegal to me.
I think it may sound great that 1.4m are employed in BPO/call centres but having been around them, there is bullying from customers and bullying from management and the worker is utterly squeezed. I’ve seen people literally crack up who cannot take it anymore, the mental health of most is affected after taking so much abuse- depression, anxiety even suicide. Its really hard to deal with people who think nothing of you and abuse you over the phone while your boss frets over every minute you spend on the phone (time off, how many calls, how fast you answer calls etc)
Gee… then get another job if you cant deal with it. For others who like the work, theyre happy to have a bpo job.
No job is perfect.
No one is forcing anyone to work a bpo job.
If you suck really bad at a bpo job, you get fired and pretend to write papers for a living and sour grape and take potshots at those who are employed.
All jobs in the multinational setting are the same, find one that is most acceptable to you. Or try to be better by having your own, if you really can’t find one. One sure thing is you can’t definitely represent the sentiments of the 1.4M.
It will be a sad day when it does. Good luck convincing a machine to give you a leeway when it comes to credit card requests. I work for a fraud protection department in one of the major US card companies and I tell you, the machine will not be able to catch all the fraud when it happens, because you’ll need someone to determine if we are speaking with a true owner or not. (Voice intonation, accent, sarcasm etc.) Not to mention if a machine erroneously restricts an account and the customer will be asked to prove their identity by sending documentation.
Only a human mind would be able to properly determine that.
Only a person who’ve talked to thousands of people in a single career would be able to properly determine that.
i see a few different ways queries can be dealt with without a contact centre – prime among these is putting up MUCH greater functionality online and letting customers resolve their queries online – this goes for everything from loan applications to everyday banking such as balance transfers, requesting new cards, pin changes, etc…. everything can be done online. Just takes the right people to do it
This article has limited foresight. It ignored the very highly probable fact that as long as there are new products, someone has to sell them. And then someone has to remind installment buyers to pay.
Do you have a solution or just complaining? You fail to see the multiplier effect of foreign investment into the Philippine economy which stimulates other jobs. You want this money to go somewhere else and continue the poverty in this country. Get a grip!
Wrong, what foreign investment? When Accenture creates a 500 seat call center, it takes local loans from BPI and Metrobank to finance the project. I should know, I took care of that. What multiplier effect? the only effect is a disincentive for local businessmen to put up their own factories for jobs because the local labor front prefers to to employed by BPOs. Thank you.
i don’t work in BPO, and i’m not threatened. i’m just practical, looking at my fellow countrymen exploited by you!!!
o shut up mr i am better than everyone else. but then that stock market bs was introduced by those so called neo colonial masters………….
said the idiot writing resumes lolol bigger than 100k a month year right lol
Ha ha, eat your heart out. Check out the prices of a contracted resume/CV online. 100K a month? LOL that’s on the low side during lean months.
Honestly Mr. Lim, I’m currently working as a Call center agent. But I don’t feel anything against you. I even admired you because of those things that you just posted. I still work in the BPO because of our needs but I really don’t wanted the job. The only thing that keeps me going is my family and the competition inside. I consistently receive incentives per month however, i’m still not satisfied. I never felt satisfaction and never been proud serving foreigners who just give us 10% night differential as an exchange of leaving our family at night just to be on time to serve their customers.
Now i’m thinking to resign and do home based jobs instead.
Can you suggest a better job other than BPO industry? You’re looking forward BPO disappearing altogether? Did you know that BPO is providing jobs for millions of Filipinos and helping micro-businesses? Be careful what you wish for. Maybe your enjoying life and you didn’t need a job like most of the Filipinos that’s why you lack empathy. Oh your surname is LIM, im not surprised with your comments.
Wrong again, study how the South Koreans become a tiger economy. Not by working for western colonial masters in their own backyard. They SACRIFICED with their own sweat to put up their own capital for local businesses. Try to learn what ENTREPRENEUR means. YOu know what, the first instance of political instability or turmoil, and Accenture will be among the first to get out of the country, leaving your 1.4M BPO employees instantly jobless. So where is you micro-businesses holding an empty bag?. Unlike local companies that have invested a lot and stick it out even in times of economic distress. The sooner BPO dies out, the better.
Let me explain what neo collonialism is. You know what colonialiss is, it is exploitation of resources of a conquered foreign peoples for the advantage of invaders/conquerors. Do you realize that BPO fits the same description when it exploits low labor cost of a former colony so that the former colonial masters can be more profitable? Neo means new. It is relative. The new colonialsm has about zero invasive component. So no country in imposing on another. But what you have is the country being exploited inviting foreign powers or former invaders to exploit them for a win-win solution. The foreigner gets to save a lot and wins, the exploited country suddenly has employment rates artificially going up and wins.
I think it may sound great that 1.4m are employed in BPO/call centres
but having been around them, there is bullying from customers and
bullying from management and the worker is utterly squeezed