80,000 more call center jobs this year

CEBU, Philippines — The contact center industry expects to employ 80,000 more this year amid the sluggish movement of the outsourcing industry worldwide.

The optimism on the sector’s growth in the country is primarily drawn from its leadership in providing outstanding customer experience, a skill that cannot be performed by technology like robotics or artificial intelligence (AI), said Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) chairman Benedict Hernandez during yesterday’s official opening of the 15th Contact Islands 2019 Conference held at the Shangri-La’s Mactan Resort and Spa.

According to Hernandez, the projected 80 thousand additional jobs will be realized if the Philippines were to achieve the eight percent to nine percent industry growth in 2019.

While the global outsourcing business only expects four percent growth, the Philippines is confident to hit the higher growth level between seven percent to eight percent.

The conference, which was attended by close to 300 top officials and decision makers in the outsourcing sector, is zooming in their discussion on refining the “customer experience” (Cx) edge of the Philippines over other outsourcing destinations around the world.

In fact, what brings the Philippines on top of the global outsourcing solutions provider, is its ability to convey “personal touch” with customers, confirmed American consulting and research firm Everest Group top executive H. Karthik.

“Clients today have gone beyond traditional service level agreements (SLAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs). By capitalizing on digital capabilities, clients have started to expect their service provides to help them reshape and transform the end-to-end customer experience to impact both top line and bottom line,” explained Jojo Uligan, CCAP president.

Everest Group’s analysis reveals that the Philippines still enjoys 16 percent to 18 percent of the estimated global IT-BPM market of USD 81 billion to USD 83 billion. 

By end of 2018, the Philippine registered 1.23 million direct employees in the IT and Business Processing Services (BPS) sector.

Metro Cebu is also aiming to reach at least 200 thousand direct employment in the BPS business.

One of the indicators for a bullish forecast this year from a weak performance last year, is the good take up of real estate for IT-BPO in the last few months, which resurged to 126,000 square meters from January to April, which is back to historical high levels.