Convergys Corp. is expanding its Philippine operations by next year to make it the biggest outside the US with 20,000 workers.

Convergys Corp.’s newly appointed president for customer management, Andrea Ayers, made the announcement yesterday, as she said Convergys’s customer demands “to be in the Philippines” has driven this decision.

The firm is opening five built-to-specification locations in Cebu City’s Asiatown IT Park called Cebu i3; at the University of the Philippines Science Park in Quezon City; in Nuvali, Santa Rosa, Laguna; San Lazaro district close to the University Belt in the City of Manila; and the Glorietta 5 building, which is under construction in Makati City’s Ayala Center.

The Cebu i3 facility is expected to open in August this year, contain 450 seats and employ a minimum of 650 employees. The UP facility will hold 575 seats and employ at least 850 workers and is scheduled to go live in November this year. The facility in Santa Rosa, Laguna, will hold 660 seats, employ a minimum of 950 workers, and is scheduled to begin operations in December. By April next year, Convergys will occupy the top five floors of the Glorietta 5 structure, hold 1,850 seats, and provide jobs for 1,850 employees.

In total, the five new facilities that will open over the next 18 months will generate 3,995 seats and provide jobs for 7,000 new agents—a figure that excludes “team leaders, human- resource department personnel and technical support staff,” Convergys Philippines vice president and country manager Marife Zamora said.

Zamora expressed confidence about the availability of qualified workers at the new expansion sites, saying that “definitely there is job-ready talent where we are expanding.”

She also said Convergys had strong support from the communities and local government officials where they are operating, adding that “our contact centers not only provide new jobs at our facilities; they also provide opportunities for other businesses to earn—including fast-food restaurants, transport operators, convenience stores and the like.”

Ayers gave particular focus on the Nuvali facility in Laguna which, she said, was designed to be “environment-friendly.” Convergys Philippines director for business development Jose Mari Mercado said the Nuvali contact center comes with solar panels to supplement the facility’s power supply, a lake for catching rainwater and a bike-friendly structure that will allow workers to bike to work and park their bicycles on the same floor where they work.

“The (property) developer is also building dormitories close to our Laguna facility to ensure there is convenient and affordable housing for our employees there,” Mercado added.

According to Mercado, the Convergys expansion is part of the firms policy of priority hiring for locally-based job applicants in each location, “though we will provide space for those who are not from these areas if our staff requirements dictate the need to do so.”

The policy of local hiring, Mercado said, “makes sense because it makes it’s easier for our employees to get to work and to get home. Their safety is improved and they will work better because they have more time to rest and have less worries. It is part of the value we offer our employees because they are knowledge workers, not telephone operators.”

Convergys officials also announced at the same event the launch of its new solutions for in-house customer service operations, particularly its Multichannel Automation Solutions portfolio, which leverages the latest technology in channel automation “enhanced with real-time decision-making, personalization and analytics to help companies with in-house customer service operations improve the quality and value of their customer interactions, lower associated costs and better understand customer service expectations to retain customers.”

Ayers also pointed out that Convergys has been providing Philippines-based knowledge process outsourcing services for the last 10 years and will be offering these services from its new Philippine locations side by side with its bread-and-butter offerings of customer support, sales, technical support, back-office work and collections.”

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Convergys Corp. is expanding its Philippine operations by next year to make it the biggest outside the US with 20,000 workers.

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