A New Capital of Call Centers

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
What was predicted last year has finally happened. The Philippines have officially become the undisputed capital of outsourced call centers, beating out India for the number one slot. The Philippines have 50K more customer service representatives than India and growing. It’s been a long road to finally drive home the language barrier problem to corporate executives of English speaking companies.

The growing preference for the Philippines reflects in part the maturation of the outsourcing business and in part a preference for American English.
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Half the time it's not just a preference for American English, but ANY English.
 
Metrocall said:
Half the time it's not just a preference for American English, but ANY English.
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We have a lot of call centers going up here in Maine. It's like they're actively trying to put these things in areas with heavy accents.
 
I prefer proper English and not "English" such as "May I AXE you a few questions".
 
Metrocall said:
Half the time it's not just a preference for American English, but ANY English.
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This. Although I've noticed, much more often these days, actually being able to talk to someone who's actually is american or canadian or some other native english speaking person. It's a lot easier too deal with say a southern accent than someone who barely speaks English in the first place. I guess with the crumby economy some places are actually starting to take customer service seriously. I know I've quite dealing with some companies all together and will not give them a second chance; because they do such a poor job of customer service reguardless of how good or bad their product actually is. Even the best made or thought out products and services fail sometimes. It's how they treat their customers when it inevitably fails in some way that determines whether or not I will do business with them.
 
wizdum said:
We have a lot of call centers going up here in Maine. It's like they're actively trying to put these things in areas with heavy accents.
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Even still, Maine >>>>>>> India/Philippines

wtiger said:
This. Although I've noticed, much more often these days, actually being able to talk to someone who's actually is american or canadian or some other native english speaking person. It's a lot easier too deal with say a southern accent than someone who barely speaks English in the first place. I guess with the crumby economy some places are actually starting to take customer service seriously. I know I've quite dealing with some companies all together and will not give them a second chance; because they do such a poor job of customer service reguardless of how good or bad their product actually is. Even the best made or thought out products and services fail sometimes. It's how they treat their customers when it inevitably fails in some way that determines whether or not I will do business with them.
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I couldn't have said it better myself!
 
Since when did English become the first language of the P.I.?

I meet Phillipinos everyday that live here in the US now... A large number of them speak good English but the FOBs can have some really strong accents too.
 
robble said:
Since when did English become the first language of the P.I.?

I meet Phillipinos everyday that live here in the US now... A large number of them speak good English but the FOBs can have some really strong accents too.
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Last company I worked for outsourced a majority of our customer support to the Philippines. It was odd...it wasn't so much that they had accents but they spoke REALLY robotic. English was perfect, but you might as well be speaking to Siri.
 
I worked in a call center in the Philippines for over a year and I can say that while English is *technically* an official language (the other being Tagalog), even the call center agents I interacted with on a daily basis were not capable of more than small talk without difficulty. Accents are a mixed bag. While some of the "better" agents speak English very well, quite a few barely meet the standards required (there is a test).

I used to think that the most frustrating thing was trying to communicate with someone that didn't speak English. Now, I know that speaking to someone that knows just enough to *appear* to understand you is much more frustrating because without probing them sharply, you just can't tell. In general, they found it to be a chore to speak English. Even to the point where they deliberately ignored English only rules on the call floor.

Outside of a call center, good luck getting someone that can speak English. Taxis, malls, restaurants, movie theaters, fast food places... all exercises in futility. I wasn't in some remote part either, I was the Manilla area, and the call center had about 1500 agents in it. I don't mean this to sound hypercritical. If I had to learn Spanish to get a job that paid 4x what a fast food employee made, I'd probably only learn just enough to get by, and only use it when I had to. As it is I speak only one language - English (excluding various computer related languages lol).

The language issues aside, one point that it drove home was that the *quality* of the support provided had nothing to do with where it was provided. Some people associate tech support from India for example as being low quality, and likewise with the Philippines. The actual correlation is that the company is cutting every penny in providing support, and it shows. Being in a position to observe support for the same project both in the US and in the Philippines was enlightening to say the least.

The same failed training methods and material drove the incompetence at both ends. All of it driven by upper level management that could not fix a simple problem if their life depended on it. In both the US and the Philippines, the supervisors and QA agents were incapable of spotting technical inaccuracy in phone calls and as such unable to provide adequate training. The agents knew their supervisors couldnt help either. Supervisors just typically threatened disciplinary action when the agents had too high a handle time, even though lack of training was the cause of the high handle time.

Two of my favorites:

169.254.x.x is a bad IP address and you need to reinstall drivers
Less than 70% "free system resources" means RTV for spyware

Both of these are horribly inaccurate, and just displayed a gross ignorance of the service and proper troubleshooting and yet it was what was taught. They turned what should have been a single 10 minute phone call into multiple phone calls where a frustrated customer is calling Dell for no good reason after 40 minutes of not even coming close to what the issue actually is.

The major difference was in the US people just didn't care. In the Philippines, people *did* care, just not about troubleshooting. Working in a call center was a career there so people cared about what would get them promoted, and accurate efficient troubleshooting was not one of those things. Speak English well, have good attendance, schmooze with the right people, be a company "yes" man, dress well / have a nice phone. Boom, eventually promoted in the Philippines.
 
My employer just opened a support center in Manila and they're english accent is almost American. Plus they're a little more submissive than Americans so they have easy going personalities. To add to it I have to fly to Manila next week to train this new office, ugh.
 
Well we know they won't be outsourcing this to China. Way too much of a language barrier. Not to mention the fact that westerners would pollute the harmony of the communist state if they had direct contact with large numbers of Chinese citizens.
 
Marzuk said:
I worked in a call center in the Philippines for over a year and I can say that while English is *technically* an official language (the other being Tagalog), even the call center agents I interacted with on a daily basis were not capable of more than small talk without difficulty. Accents are a mixed bag. While some of the "better" agents speak English very well, quite a few barely meet the standards required (there is a test).

I used to think that the most frustrating thing was trying to communicate with someone that didn't speak English. Now, I know that speaking to someone that knows just enough to *appear* to understand you is much more frustrating because without probing them sharply, you just can't tell. In general, they found it to be a chore to speak English. Even to the point where they deliberately ignored English only rules on the call floor.

Outside of a call center, good luck getting someone that can speak English. Taxis, malls, restaurants, movie theaters, fast food places... all exercises in futility. I wasn't in some remote part either, I was the Manilla area, and the call center had about 1500 agents in it. I don't mean this to sound hypercritical. If I had to learn Spanish to get a job that paid 4x what a fast food employee made, I'd probably only learn just enough to get by, and only use it when I had to. As it is I speak only one language - English (excluding various computer related languages lol).

The language issues aside, one point that it drove home was that the *quality* of the support provided had nothing to do with where it was provided. Some people associate tech support from India for example as being low quality, and likewise with the Philippines. The actual correlation is that the company is cutting every penny in providing support, and it shows. Being in a position to observe support for the same project both in the US and in the Philippines was enlightening to say the least.

The same failed training methods and material drove the incompetence at both ends. All of it driven by upper level management that could not fix a simple problem if their life depended on it. In both the US and the Philippines, the supervisors and QA agents were incapable of spotting technical inaccuracy in phone calls and as such unable to provide adequate training. The agents knew their supervisors couldnt help either. Supervisors just typically threatened disciplinary action when the agents had too high a handle time, even though lack of training was the cause of the high handle time.

Two of my favorites:

169.254.x.x is a bad IP address and you need to reinstall drivers
Less than 70% "free system resources" means RTV for spyware

Both of these are horribly inaccurate, and just displayed a gross ignorance of the service and proper troubleshooting and yet it was what was taught. They turned what should have been a single 10 minute phone call into multiple phone calls where a frustrated customer is calling Dell for no good reason after 40 minutes of not even coming close to what the issue actually is.

The major difference was in the US people just didn't care. In the Philippines, people *did* care, just not about troubleshooting. Working in a call center was a career there so people cared about what would get them promoted, and accurate efficient troubleshooting was not one of those things. Speak English well, have good attendance, schmooze with the right people, be a company "yes" man, dress well / have a nice phone. Boom, eventually promoted in the Philippines.
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You don't happen to work for AT&T do you lol I remember being handed calls from reps at AT&T in the Philippines. They seemed overly scripted and not the least bit capable of solving problems outside of that scope.
 
niconx said:
Well we know they won't be outsourcing this to China. Way too much of a language barrier. Not to mention the fact that westerners would pollute the harmony of the communist state if they had direct contact with large numbers of Chinese citizens.
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Nice contribution there, kaptain kurk.
 
The company I work for outsourced its INTERNAL support to India. Nothing is more frustrating then calling support, have the other person call themselves "Dan" when their real name is "JKfldjskldban".
 
xDezor said:
Nice contribution there, kaptain kurk.
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I'm actually serious! One wonders if the Chinese government would allow such a business. They can't even handle the internet without massive filtering, can you imagine millions of calls from western citizens straight to the people? They would hear things that are downright illegal in China one customers start to complain to the reps about the outsourcing.
 
robble said:
Since when did English become the first language of the P.I.?

I meet Phillipinos everyday that live here in the US now... A large number of them speak good English but the FOBs can have some really strong accents too.
Click to expand...

It hasn't. But our fascination with American culture and being a former American colony at that has technically made English the second or third language of sorts for the Philippines. Anyone with a high school education and higher can actually speak English pretty well.


Curious....What's FOB?
 
Metrocall said:
Half the time it's not just a preference for American English, but ANY English.
Click to expand...

We have North Americans calling out site and no offence but some of them were harder to understand than someone from india or elsewhere in the world when i was Support and Support Manager, they were usually passed over to me even though we had support staff with advance English levels and some who had lived in the U.S for years.

On the other hand, i have had to deal with some foreign support people and sometimes they can be awful!!!

I do hate in Costa Rica, you press 9 for English but get someone who doesn't speak English, so now they have to transfer you to someone else and this goes on 3 or 4 times.

Draax said:
I prefer proper English and not "English" such as "May I AXE you a few questions".
Click to expand...

i hate that! as said above, North Americans are so fast to insult other countries and their support and language levels, and yet most Americans cant even speak properly or have such an accent it makes it impossible to understand. Lets not get into people from the east coast of Canada...
 
grss1982cvg said:
It hasn't. But our fascination with American culture and being a former American colony at that has technically made English the second or third language of sorts for the Philippines. Anyone with a high school education and higher can actually speak English pretty well.


Curious....What's FOB?
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FOB = Fresh Off the Boat.
 
Their tech support must struggle with the volume controls for the headsets. I know quite a few Filipinos and all the men are soft spoken while the women are all LOUD!
 
whew, I'm filipino but born and raised in american soil. If do get redirected to them, I would rather have the call centers in philippines speak tagalog (since I can understand a little) rather than them speaking broken english, although I may need my parents to translate for me half the time! hahaha

woohoooo goooo Philippines! would be funny if they did a commercial about call centers and Manny Pacquaio was answering the phone :)
 
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