THE local contact-center industry is seen to outpace its counterparts in Asia this year with a 23.4-percent growth, based on a survey covering the managers of call centers located in the region.

Dr. Catriona Wallace, president of callcentres.net, the outfit that conducted the survey sponsored by Autonomy etalk and Genesys, said the Philippines will outperform this year the likes of China, which is seen to grow by 20 percent, and India, which is projected to grow by 10 percent.

Wallace said these growth projections are based on the expansion programs lined up by the call center-managers that they talked to for the 2008 Asian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report.

The survey was done in January and covered 539 contact-center executives representing 259,699 call-center seats across Asia.

The study, which involved 87 Philippine-based firms, assessed call-center strategies, revenue generation, operations, human-resource management, technology, customer service, channel-management outsourcing, key performance indicators and management challenges.

Last year, the number of call-center seats in the Philippines also grew by 23 percent to 129,000.

The other good news for the local industry, Wallace said, is that 72 percent of the contact centers here are already considered as profit centers, which is in stark contrast with other countries like Singapore, where only 32 percent are profit centers.

Wallace said this indicates that the market in the Philippines has already recognized potentially lucrative opportunities and is on top of developing trends.

“These results show that the Filipino contact-center industry is leading the market in the region in this global trend of transitioning from cost to profit centers.

The contact center is fast becoming an organization’s most valuable revenue-generating asset, and the results suggest that the Filipino industry recognizes this,” Wallace said at the Philippine launch of the Benchmarking Report over the weekend.

Also, Wallace said the agent tenure in the Philippines improved from only 18 months in the previous survey to 22 months.

Still, Wallace said the industry should continue to address the human-resource aspect, especially with 75 percent of the respondents saying it is their biggest challenge.

Keeping the services of the call-center agents remain to be a tough challenge for the industry, with its attrition rate still at a high 26 percent for full-time agents and 37 percent for the part-time agents.

This, despite the strategies used by firms to entice agents to stay like financial incentives, rewards and recognitions, payment with above-market rates, training or education programs, flexible work arrangements, career planning, social activities and childcare arrangements.

THE local contact-center industry is seen to outpace its counterparts in Asia this year with a 23.4-percent growth, based on a survey covering the managers of call centers located in the region.

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