PLDT cuts IDD rates to 40¢ per minute

Industry leader Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) announced yesterday an across-the-board reduction in its international direct dial (IDD) charges effective yesterday.

PLDT’s IDD rate to all countries will now be 40 cents per minute, inclusive of overseas communications tax, anytime of the day and any day of the week. Products included in this offer are the regular postpaid landline service, Teletipid which is PLDT’s prepaid landline service, Touchcard, and Fonkard Plus as well as calls made through any PLDT payphone, public calling and business offices nationwide. PLDT did not say how much the reduction was in terms of percentage.

"We have been very encouraged by the significant growth we have observed in our IDD billed minutes after we implemented a major rate reduction in June of last year," according to PLDT senior vice president for customer services Claro Carmelo Ramirez.

With almost two million fixed like subscribers and hundreds of thousands of phone cards being purchased each month, this will mean that more customers will be able to realize significant savings, he said.

Ramirez added that customers can now call over 200 calling destinations worldwide 24 hours a day and seven days a week without worrying about peak or off-peak rates from anywhere in the Philippines.

The PLDT Group is the principal supplier of domestic and international telecommunications services in the country with more than five million customers.

In another development, ePLDT, a wholly-owned subsidiary of PLDT, has entered into a P300-million project with Salmat, Australia’s largest customer communications company, to put up Contact World, the newest entry into the growing call center and teleservices outsourcing business.

The call center’s major role is to provide teleservices to customers of the Asia Pacific region as well as in Europe and North America. The center will also supplement PLDT’s operator, technical and directory assistance services on an overflow basis.

"As the name implies, Contact World’s customers will be worldwide. Today, with the sophistication of the technology, the highly skilled and educated English speaking workforce in the Philippines and its ideal location within the Asian region, the company will know no boundaries," Peter Mattick, joint managing director for Salmat, said.

Salmat joint managing director Philip Salter said they are providing the expertise in the start-up and management of the call center facility while PLDT is providing the specialist expertise and skilled workforce.

While the operation is starting with 200 seats in the Manila-based call center, it has the capability to significantly scale up at short notice by bringing in standby operators from PLDT or switching over to multiple contact centers as overflow demands.

Through Salmat, Contact World has a further workstation capacity of 600 in Australia.

Among the services offered by the new call service center will be customer care and inquiry lines, help desk services, lead generation and qualification, market research, customer profiling and customer satisfaction surveys and mail, fax and e-mail order processing. The center will also offer crisis support lines, reservation, and booking for loyalty programs.

The call center is now developing applications for Citibank in Manila and is in serious negotiations with three US companies that want to outsource their customer service. There has also been inquiries from Jollibee and Loyola Memorial Park.

There are at least 7,000 customer service representatives in the whole of the United States doing in-bound services for a business estimated at $100 billion. Due to pressures on cost, many US companies now want to outsource teleservices.