Selling the Philippines full time

She is not a Cabinet secretary nor is she a former President of the republic but she promotes business in the Philippines on a full-time basis. She is Karen Batungbacal, president of Contact Federation Philippines, the country’s primary customer service trade organization.

"We’ve come a long way in the last 12 months when many foreign companies then did not know the Philippines even existed. Now, the Philippines is the top choice for back office and customer support work," she said.

The outsource contact center industry has been identified by the Information Technology and e-Commerce Committee or ITECC (the country’s highest policy-making body on information and communications technology) as one of five areas in which the Philippines has a competitive advantage.

Outsource call centers serve external customers, both domestic and international, on contract. In contrast, in-house call centers serve the customers of a particular company such as banks and credit card companies.

"To remain competitive against the rest of Asia, we need to ensure that our English competence is second to none. We need to strengthen this in our primary and second levels, together with math and the sciences. We should try and bring back Spanish and other languages that are heavily in demand, especially in North America. This would be difficult for our neighbors to duplicate," said Batungbacal.

CFP coordinates with ITECC on various initiatives and with the Board of Investments for sales and marketing. It has also recently worked with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority or Tesda to create call center training certification and standards.

Other job

When not busy with CFP, Batungbacal is chief executive officer of SourceOne Asia (Manila), the first Asian venture of a global network of contact centers which put up its first branch, a 35-seater, in New York seven years ago and is now in five continents.

"SourceOne wants to provide world-class customer contact programs in true partnership with our client companies. I see my role here as creating, enabling or assisting the Asian operations in the delivery of top quality customer support. This can encompass all aspects of the enterprise from operations to IT to human resource development," she said.

Batungbacal has spent the last 20 years in customer service. She joined SourceOne as CEO six months ago through its partner, Customer Contact Center, Inc. where she served as president.

"We are not usually the lowest cost provider in the market because we have invested in the hard and soft infrastructure that will enable us to deliver truly consistent sustainable quality on our operations. This will eventually redound to cost efficiencies for both SourceOne and our client companies since we practice Six Sigma with International Standards Organization 9002-2000 process disciplines," she said.

Six Sigma and ISO-certified processes are internally recognized standards of quality in the pursuit of customer satisfaction.

Clearly, Batungbacal knows what she’s talking about.