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Call Center Outsourcing Continues to Grow Despite Opposition

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

The call center outsourcing industry is continuing to grow, with mounting success in India and the Philippines. According to a World Bank quarterly update, the Philippines portion of the report stated that job creation is expected to add 100,000 positions in 2012. 

According to this BWorld report, continuous growth in the call center outsourcing sector has been evident since 2004 when there were a mere 100,000 jobs in the industry. In 2011, those numbers reached an astounding 610,000

.U.S. banks are also seeing the increase in call center outsourcing. At the time of the World Bank report, Wells Fargo had decided on the Philippines for its $2 billion business process outsourcing center. The Wells Fargo (News - Alert) Philippines Solutions plans to employ 126,000. 

The bank’s call center outsourcing operation will join other companies like Hewlett-Packard, Accenture and Thomson Reuters (News - Alert). The big name groups will be located in McKinley Hill Cyberpark in Manila, Philippines, a highly populated metropolis.

But in order for a BPO operation to continue to grow, they will need to expand their portfolios to more than just voice-only services. Call centers can tap into much needed research and analytics for health care, legal and financial industries. 

Everest Group estimated that 90 percent of the BPO global market will be non-voice services valued at around $220 billion to $280 billion in 2012. The Philippine’s non-voice services ranks barely fifth of their total revenues, even as they employ nearly a third of the entire call center workforce.

The tenacity of the country’s ability to provide information technology on a global scale will only solidify the trend of call center outsourcing. The Philippines saw an increase of $11 billion in revenue in 2011, according to Ernesto Herrera, a former U.S. senator. But the Business processing Association of the Philippines said it fully expects an 18 percent jump to $13 billion in 2012. 

The addition of the second largest bank in the U.S. only seals the deal. Wells Fargo could easily help the country reach $50 billion by 2020.

There is still the question of the education levels of Filipino workers and the opposition from the West in the form of a tabled bill currently in the hands of the U.S. House of Representatives. If passed, this bill would make companies that partake in call center outsourcing ineligible for federal grants. It also gives customers the ability to request a U.S. operator as foreign call centers would be required to disclose their location.

The Philippine government is already taking the necessary steps to work toward its education goals as a way of helping companies continue their call center outsourcing growth and subsequent boost to the country’s economy. This will definitely help the local economy, as well as U.S.-based companies that are able to significantly reduce costs.


Edited by Jamie Epstein