AS the business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the country evolves, competency on the use of the English language is slowly becoming less necessary.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) announcement of the staging of its 11th International Contact Center Conference and Expo (ICCCE), SPi Global Holdings Inc. Senior Vice President of Customer Relationship Management for Asia Pacific Rommel Reginio said the use of social media is changing the landscape in call centers.
“Social media was picking up less than 1 percent before and now it is at 11 percent. We are at the frontline in developing core competency in social-media. We are creating something specific,” Reginio said.
He said because of the millennials, a different process of communicating became a necessity.
“There has to be a new way to engage with the client and create virtual empathy. There has to be a level of expertise in a new platform where we will be able to create rapport,” Reginio said.
Reginio explained that emojis and emoticons will be in use as they try to understand the clients and build trust with them. He said there are few rules in the use of social media.
Reginio projected the use of social media to reach 30 percent in two years within contact centers. However, he said that, even with the use of voice dwindling from 70 percent to 55 percent, there is still a lot of growth for that sector in contact centers.
“People are shifting from one channel to another. They connect to social media then the hotline. Frontliners are multitasking,” Reginio said, while adding that the industry now has a good pool of people employed.
Reginio said customer support is evolving to include e-mail, chat, social media and then omni-channel. He said they now do up-selling, cross-selling, finance, accounting, human resources, shared services and data analytics.
Currently, he said social-media queries are being answered within one hour, e-mails in nine hours and voice calls typically in five minutes.
The CCAP is projecting that the total number of individuals employed within the industry will reach 800,000 by year-end, with employee average age of 24 years old.
Reginio said BPOs are now increasingly hiring graduates with degrees in business administration, industrial and electrical communications engineering, accounting, nursing and doctors of medicine.
He said entry-level salary is now at P18,000 to P24,000, which could quickly go up to P60,000 for an employee over a three-year period.
Meanwhile, the next installment of the ICCCE next month will have the participation of over 100 international investors that could potentially start operations in the country.
The two-day conference, dubbed “Contact Islands: Opportunities in the Ultimate Customer Experience Paradise,” is set to have companies from the United States, Europe, Australia-New Zealand and Asia looking at the industry and meeting with key government agencies for business opportunities and business matching.
The ICCCE is the country’s largest gathering of information technology, business-process management key executives and thought leaders.
Image credits: Rodel Alzona