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CONTACT-center company Convergys announced it will open
its ninth facility in the country by late second quarter
of next year at the San Antonio Park Square in Bacolod
City with an initial 300 employees in a 3,000
square-meter facility, that is good for 300 employees
more.
Initial
investment will reach about $8,000-$10,000 per work
station just for the initial phase, or about $3 million.
The
Bacolod office will provide both general support and
advanced technical help desk services to various
Convergys clients through traditional voice calling,
e-mail, and Web chat, including back-office applications
and document processing.
“We
usually do due diligence in choosing a site. We chose
Bacolod mainly because of the abundance of talent there,
meaning they are English-speaking and information
technology-proficient,” said Marife Zamora, Convergys
country manager, yesterday.
While
they still have to determine who are the clients to be
served by the new facility, she said they would be
mostly from the financial services industry.
Clint
Streit, executive for customer care, said the company is
looking at other cities in Western Visayas as well,
where it could establish other facilities. “We’re moving
to that direction, but it usually takes around 18 months
of planning, so I guess it would take a while before we
build another facility.”
He said
the brand-new built-to-suit facility will also feature
the same network and infrastructure standards currently
implemented in other Convergys facilities in the
Philippines
and other countries.
Compared
with when Convergys started in the Philippines in 2003,
Streit said employee quality is now comparable with
global standards. “The abundance of talent here is a big
plus for us, and our growth rate here is becoming much
faster.”
He
mentioned that even with a two-year head start enjoyed
by India, Convergys’s employee base here now totaling
close to 11,000 trails that of India by just a few
hundreds.
But some
problems still remain.
Zamora
said they noticed the decrease in the quality of English
proficiency in the country, especially the fact that
most Filipinos now speak in “Taglish,” or a combination
of English and Tagalog.
The
company thus implemented a couple of initiatives to
address this downslide with a continuing mentorship
program in cooperation with the Department of Education
in which “we train public high- school teachers,
particularly in the provinces, in terms of improving
English teaching.”
She
added that the company is also implementing its CPS
program or Convergys Philippines Services, which she
calls their “near hire” program. It gives a second
chance to those who didn’t quite make it the first time
by giving them training to be able to make it the second
time.
According to Streit, the quality of English is really a
concern. “There are now many companies locating here,
and practically, demand is higher than supply. It may
affect the country’s image as a top-quality call-center
location. With these initiatives we’re doing everything
we can to improve the quality.”
The
company was awarded Outstanding Employer and Outstanding
Exporter by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority and
also as top IT company last year, and is the only
US-based company that has an all-Filipino staff.
Convergys provides services in 70 countries in 35
languages from 77 contact center locations in various
countries. |
