Call Centre in Manila for Providing Banking and Finance Customer Service - Essay Example

Call Centre in Manila for providing Banking and Finance Service Summary: Western companies are seeking places to achieve the benefitsof outsourcing by implementing modern technologies in Asian countries like the Philippines, India, and China. This paper describes the cultures and skills of Filipino people that are relevant to achieving success by establishing call centres in Manila, Philippines. Why Manila can be a suitable place for Call centres is described here. English speaking skills with necessary quickness and accuracy as well as behavioural politeness have been discussed in this paper. Abstract: This report focused on establishing a call centre in Manila, Philippine to provide banking and finance customer service to the clients of a UK based banking organization. The organization acquired necessary property for the call centre and a number of key management employees having British citizenship will supervise the call centre. Introduction: A UK based company extended the business into the finance and insurance sector with a banking and finance division which was incorporated with around 50,000 customer accounts in mid 2000s. Overtime it became costlier to provide services to the customers; hence to achieve financial savings – in 2011, a decision was taken as part of the five-year strategic plan to open an inbound call centre outside the UK; afterward Manila, Philippine was chosen. The aim of this call centre is to achieve financial savings as well as the benefits of outsourcing while providing satisfactory services to the customers of the company. This report is being prepared to achieve the following objectives: Knowing about the call centres in Manila and the culture of Philippine Politeness of the Filipino people English speaking skills of the Filipino people Language and interaction qualities of the Filipino people Culture in Manila: Manila is one of the most energetic and diverse cities of Asia. This city is an extensive mass of humanity, acutely reflecting long heritage of cultures and classes. Straddling the Pasing River’s delta, the Philippines’ capital is actually a group of cities fused into one. There are plenty of highlights in each sub city within Manila. Almost all sorts of life-style facilities and entertainments are available in this city, a number of world’s biggest shopping-malls are in Manila. Depending on the interest of the people vibrant nightlives attract the tourist to Manila (Margaret W. Sullivan, “The Philippines: Pacific Crossroads”). Call Centres in Manila: In the Philippines call centres were started with the services of email responses and relevant managing services. These centres have the capabilities managing and maintaining all types of customer care, customer relations including technical support, travel services, education, financial services, business to business support, business to customer support, etc. Call centres are one of the fastest growing industries in Manila and many other places in the Philippines. Foreign companies choose this country for call centres due to less expensive labour costs and operational costs as well as highly skilled workforce with proficiency in UK-style and American-style English and idioms. A constant stream of graduates are entering the workforce each year, it is also a plus point to setup call centres in the Philippines. This country has become one of the top business processing outsourcing (BPO) destinations in the world since late 1990s due to bilingual education, similarity to the western culture, and low cost labour market (Eric Friginal, 2007, “Oursourced call centres and English in the Philippines”). Locations Number of call centres Locations Number of call centres Bacolod 6 Makati 274 Batangas City 1 Mandaluyong 32 Lipa 2 Manila 150 Baguio 8 Marikina 10 Cabanataun 1 Muntinlupa 24 Cagayan de Oro 3 Naga City 10 Dumaguete 5 Ortigas Center 141 Metro Cebu 44 Pampanga 31 Metro Davao 10 Pasig 27 Eastwood City 30 Quezon City 77 Gumaca, Quezon 1 Rizal 4 Iiigan 2 San Juan, Metro Manila 13 IIoiIo City 7 Tacloban City 1 La Union 1 Zamboanga City 1 Laguna 12 General Santos City 3 Las Pinas 9 Call Centre Directory of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority Table 1: Call Centres in the Philippines To achieve success by implementing call centres in an offshore country companies always try to recruit the best employees within the company-budget. From Jane Lockwood’s research it is found that recruiters give importance on grammar and quick thinking when they recruit agents for the call centres. To be recruited a candidate should have proper sense of how to form a sentence by maintaining tenses; quickness and accuracy both are observed by the recruiters (Jane Lockwood, 2012, “Are we getting the right people for the job?”). Manila dislodged Mumbai, India, and has become the second-best in the world as the outsourcing destination. Aside from Manila, in 2014 three next-wave cities of Philippines outside Metro Manila improved their rankings. Davao improved to 69th and Bacolod improved to 93rd position, while Santa Rosa and Laguna improved two notches, and Cebu and Baguio are at the places of eighth and ninety-ninth. According to the undersecretary Louis Casambre (Information and Communications Technology Office of the Department of Science and Technology), they want to add three more Filipino cities in the top-100 list within the year of 2016. Revenues from the business process outsourcing last year increased by fifteen per cent to 13.34 billion US dollars, and 100,000 more employment are reported in this year. According to Good News Pilippinas, now Manila is the 2nd most popular BPO-destination in the world. The UK based company mentioned in this report wants to setup an inbound call centre in Manila. An inbound call centre handles and manages following tasks: Inquiries, Requests for assistance that come from help desk offices, Order taking and fulfilment, Payment authorization, Recording of complaints, Disputes monitoring and handling, Customer services including support functions, Transcription services, Customers’ requests handling, Verifying electronic eligibility, Sales by telephone, Marketing and lead generation, Request processing for billing services. The effects of globalization on societies have made many challenges and changes in cross-cultural communications. Many offshore destinations in the world have been exposed to western heritage and culture through the availability of the technologies like television channels and internet. Differences in the time-zones have been overcome by creating several shifts in a day. Call centres can provide services 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Though the costs in each country are increasing, but it is still beneficial to hire agents from the Asian countries than the served countries like UK, USA, Japan. The Asia Pacific region is performing better than many other regions like Eastern Europe, Africa, and South America, and gaining benefits of the continuous progress in outsourcing. South Korea and Japan are seen to rise investments on near-shore outsourcing in labour-rich but low-cost neighbouring country China, while western countries prefer to invest in open economies, close-to-western cultures countries like India and the Philippines. Frost and Sullivan forecasted about the rise of call centres from 21,360 call centres in 2004 to 39,248 in 2011, at 9.1 per cent compound annual growth-rate. Figure 1: Forecast Growth of Call Centres in Asia Pacific (Source: Frost and Sullivan) Of the Asian countries, India is at the top position; then the countries like the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and China are following closely. The Filipino people have American-influenced culture and better proficiency in English comparable to many countries in the world. For this reason and also for the available skilled workforce Manila and many other cities of the Philippines have become ideal places to establish call centres (Aileen S. Alava, “Updates on the Philippines call centre industry”). Cultural Anthropology and politeness of Filipino people: Filipino culture is a combination of Western and Eastern cultures. Significant influences of Spanish and American cultures are seen in Filipino culture, though the Philippines exhibits aspects found in other Asian countries with a Malay heritage. District festivals which are also known as “barrio fiestas” are celebrated to commemorate the feast-days of patron-saints. Among the most well-known festivals, the Sinulog Festival and the Moriones Festival are two of them. In these festival days, feasting, dancing, and music are done. However, like many other civilizations some traditions are being forgotten or being changed due to modernization (Paul A. Rodell, 2002, “Culture and Customs of the Philippines”). As the clients of the mother company will contact the agents of the call centre to get assistance to solve their problems, the clients will certainly expect clear language and accent as well as polite behaviour from the call-centre agents. Hence, politeness has a great role to achieve customer satisfaction. The word “polite” correlated with ‘appropriate’, ‘friendly’, ‘pleasant’, ‘considerate’, and ‘respectful’. Many English speakers express politeness as consideration, pleasantness and friendliness, appropriateness, respect, and modesty. In discursive approach, politeness can be described as follows: linguistic behaviour which carries values in emergent networks in excess of the requirements of the politic behaviour of overall interactions (Michael Haugh, “The discursive challenge to politeness research”). As for example, to show politeness, people’s feelings should be considered by following social-norms and expectations, which include uses of ‘please’ and ‘sorry’ in appropriate-situations. Filipinos are very polite and they are euphemistic. They avoid using harsh and insulting words. They have harmony and good feelings between the Westerner and the Filipino. It would be advisable for the former tone down his voice. They expressed loudly and vociferously. There is no harm is done. It is different story about Filipinos. Their speaking in a raised voice and their swearing, shouting and showing violent displays of temper are considered inexcusable. If the Westerner shows anger and they will suffer a loss of respect that he may never regain and the Filipino who involved will suffer a loss of face. The Filipinos becomes a criticism of his work. And it reacts to criticisms emotionally and that is not hurtful, that considers his feelings. They are taught to respectful individuals and that the influence of Christianity honours both the parents and the elders (Filipino Politeness, “Circumlocutions and Polite Indirections of Filipinos”). In case of hospitality, when it comes to their fellowmen the Filipinos are very hospitable. After a long journey they will invite their visitors to come into their homes offer them snacks and drinks, even if they may not be able to afford it. They give up the comfort of their own bedrooms for their guests and just to ensure that their guests are feeling comfortable. Language and Interaction: English language is being used as foreign language in most of the countries in the world. From global perspective, there is no doubt that English is the universal shared language or lingua franca. The number of non-native speakers of English is far large from the native speakers. According to Crystal (1997), about 80% of the English speaking people are non-native. The development and widespread use of technology is fuelling up the globalization, and due to globalization communication dynamics is undergoing inevitable changes. To achieve the benefits of globalization, sharing of language facilities are needed (Mirjaliisa Charles, “Language matters in global communication”). In the recent years many call centres moved from India to the Philippines. The reason behind this issue is the customer dissatisfaction with the language and accent of the agents of Indian call centres. Due to the poor communication skills of the agents, many employers shifted their call centres from India to the Philippines. It is said that the people of the Philippines have better English speaking skills with neutral American accent. However, this is not always true, but it is generally accepted that Filipino agents are easier for the Americans to understand their accents (Rob O’Malley, “Philippines Call Centre Outsourcing”). According to Rob O’Malley, a client outsources a large amount of call centre traffic to the Philippines and conducted 1000s of post-call surveys with the people who had called their call centre. The crushing issue raised was that of the inability to understand their English and their accent. Many other companies conducted same type of surveys and got similar results. Hence, it is very much important that language and accent of the agents of the call centres should be considered. Filipinos learn English either through formal education or by watching English television shows. They are far less exposed to the phraseology, vocabulary, and accent of the countries like UK and Australia. Many call centres have taken necessary steps to train their employees with proper UK and Australian accent. However, now there are external training providers who are providing different courses to assist with British and Australian accents. Some call centres have applied the rule of “English-only” policy to increase the skills of their employees. Under this rule, no employee will be allowed to communicate with another person other than English. Sometimes organizations go through tests to examine the translation/interpretation skills of the employees or candidates. The tests examine following skills: bilingual language skills, cross-cultural knowledge, professional ethics, impartiality, confidentiality, as well as translating and interpreting skills (Communication Across Cultures – Interpreting and Translating). Filipinos have a relaxed communication style compared with their western countries’ equivalents. This issue is responsible for increased average handle time (AHT) then a domestic one. If an agent takes long time to resolve an issue than it may be frustrating for the customers. It has been estimated that a Filipino will take 5 to 50% additional time than a domestic agent. The metric of average handle time has been eliminated from many call centre operations as it is widely believed that it forces agents to communicate in a different manner and often not resolve the customers’ issues. However, it is also important to assess the differences between onshore and offshore in this regard so that it provides useful insight into whether call centres are better to be offshored or kept at home. Much of the cost-savings will be wiped out if it takes an average of 50% more handling time than an onshore centre. Hence, it should be considered wisely. The issue described in the above paragraph can be resolved through effective implementation of training and coaching strategies which are specifically designed for this. Many Filipino call centres have taken steps to resolve this issue, and have brought the average handle time to almost similar level of the domestic centres (Rob O’Malley, “Philippines Call Centre Outsourcing”). Conclusion: As the Filipino people are familiar with the western cultures and accents and know better English then many other competitive countries, there is a great chance that the company will achieve benefits by establishing a call centre in Manila. To compete with India and China the Filipino authority should give attention to produce skilled manpower that will be able to provide call centre services in the desired languages of the clients, especially in UK and US accent English. The company which wants to setup a call centre in Manila already have taken initiatives to train their employees to teach proper language and accent as well as other necessary management skills. References: 1. Eppie Estanisloa Clark, “Characteristics of work organization in UK and Philippines call centres” 2. Aileen S. Alava, “Updates on the Philippines call centre industry: The Issue of Sustainability” < http://cba.upd.edu.ph/docs/DP/0602_ALAVA.pdf> 3. Rob O’Malley, “Philippines Call Centre Outsourcing” < http://www.call-centres.com/philippines_call_centre_book.pdf> 4. Paul A. Rodell, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, “Culture and Customs of the Philippines” 5. Michael Haugh, School of Languages and Linguistics, Griffith University, Australia, “The discursive challenge to politeness research” 6. Mirjaliisa Charles, Helsinki School of Economics, Finland, “Language matters in global communication”, Article based on ORA lecture, October 2006 7. Jane Lockwood, Journal of Business Communication, 2012, “Are we getting the right people for the job? A study of English language recruitment assessment practices in the business processing outsourcing sector: India and the Philippines” 8. Margaret W. Sullivan, Dillon Press, 1998, “The Philippines: Pacific Crossroads” 9. Communication Across Cultures – Interpreting and Translating 10. Eric Friginal, 2007, “Oursourced call centres and English in the Philippines” Read More