How may I help you?
March 14, 2005 | 12:00am
A sunshine industry that has our national leaders singing paeans for is the so-called call center business. Next to India, the Philippines is enjoying a significant share in this global outsourcing trend. Clearly, the overarching priority to save on operational cost is a boon to countries such as ours, which benefit from labor-intensive operations and technologically driven infrastructure.
The call center sector makes grandiose claims about providing employment for a large number of Filipinos. Their employment ads in the newspapers and large illuminated signages in Makati, Eastwood, Cebu and other call-center-friendly locations lure the young, fresh-out-of-college graduates to give their companies a try. It’s all very well, considering the dire straits we find ourselves in terms of (un)employment statistics.
Lines of applicants that snake around city blocks are a common sight around call center offices. So are Caucasian expatriates who must be the management overlords in these bustling operations. Despite the First World sheen, the call center is a backroom operation for huge businesses, an outsourcing strategy resorted to not because of developing countries’ advantages in terms of manpower skills and resources, but because labor is cheap, d-i-r-t-c-h-e-a-p.
The business has spawned a host of secondary and support services as well. The technology infrastructure is good business for telecommunication carriers and international gateway facilities. Industrial and business parks give accommodations to expansive production floors. Call centers count employees in the hundreds and even thousands, thus a sprawling floor area is a requisite. Foreign managers and consultants also create a demand for the more expensive condo or apartment rentals.
Language trainers or coaches are hired by call centers to provide their telemarketers with an intensive crash course in American diction and cultural eccentricities (or British or Canadian, or whichever else country their clients are providing services in). The idea is to train them to become effective telemarketers by being able to communicate well in the (English) language that their customers are able to understand. Many English teachers from elite universities moonlight in call centers as coaches. Some have, in fact, left the noble task of education for the more lucrative pay as managers of or consultants to call centers.
One by-product of this trade struck home as I drove past streamers put up by a prestigious university in a city best left unmentioned (lest I, by a process of elimination, also divulge the name of the university). This stalwart of quality education, a (four) pillar(s) of the community was offering a course on call center training for the hapless provinciano student who would plunk down his parents’ hard-earned money to be educated in becoming a telemarketer. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being a call center operator, regardless of whether one handles outbound or inbound calls. It is an entirely dignified way to make a living. It is of particular irony that in this unmentioned city, there is not a call center within a 350-kilometer radius.
Next to Filipino doctors going through nursing school just to be able to work in the USA or Canada, and others who undergo a six-month training to learn how to wipe old people’s bottoms in Europe, I find this development most appalling. Not long ago, when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, Filipino kids would say they wanted to become doctors, astronauts, lawyers, even president of the Philippines. What would they say if we were to ask them now? That they would like to be caregivers and nurses, and, if they couldn’t leave our shores, sure, they wouldn’t mind being a call center operator.
While I can appreciate the value of further training to hone the skills of a worker in a specific trade or craft, I think there’s a self-incriminating and tacit admission of the education system’s failure to properly train these aspiring new graduates in the English language. I can even allow for inadequate English training among public school graduates (who are, to no one’s blame, of less fortunate stock to belong to "poor" families who may not have the right home environment that would encourage the use of English).
The rational for a call center training program in a university is to drill the students in the English grammar and the cultural nuances that the language is used in. The cultural part I can understand, but grammar? That should have been long ingrained in the students since grade school and high school. In effect, young Filipinos whose ambition in life is to become call center operators will need to pay for training they should have undergone back in basic education. That’s a double whammy, if ever there was one.
A recent newspaper report quoted an industry observer that only one out of four applicants in call centers is hired, the chief reason being that the other three do not have the basic English skills needed for the job. That doesn’t surprise me. Give yourself a penitential treat this coming Holy Week by subjecting yourself to a 15-minute viewing of any of the noontime shows on local TV and count the number of atrocious English (and other inanities) used by the hosts and guests (do they even speak English at all?). I predict that three out of four of you, dear readers, won’t last the 15 minutes before you pledge yourselves to chaste and celibate existence for the rest of your lives just to get away from it.
In a recent study by the Diwa Asia Publishing group, focused group discussions (FGDs) were conducted with social studies teachers on their preferred language in teaching their subject (the Department of Education mandates the use of Filipino). The overwhelming opinion was that social studies education would be better served if it were taught in English. In the Visayas, particularly, these teachers needed to translate their Filipino lectures into English so their students could understand them. Most of the teachers believed themselves to be more effective in English, anyway, and claimed their students also preferred them to give their lectures in English. We must question, however, the proficiency of these teachers, in the first place, considering the quality of students we seem to be producing every year.
For a country that once boasted having one of the largest English-speaking populations in the world, our vocabulary seems to be limited to a smattering of "Hi, Joe!" and "Customer Service, how may I help you?" Newsweek reports the shifting influences in the evolution of the English language, the non-native speakers now outnumbering the native speakers (3 to 1). Countries whose people barely spoke English a decade ago are now rushing to be educated in English, knowing that English remains to be the business and technology language of the world, "the turbine engine of globalization."
While culture-bound countries like Japan, South Korea and Malaysia have stepped up efforts to educate their children in English starting in grade school, we continue to debate over the issues of nationalism and patriotism in the use of English and Filipino. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s declaration of support for English, notwithstanding our basic education curriculum, is one confused muddle of bilingual chaos. Not to mention the dismal English competence of our teachers.
I am glad there are such sunny oases in our economic landscape such as call centers. The thousands who find jobs in these antiseptic cubicles that make up a call center are luckier than those who gamble their lives for a domestic job in Hong Kong or Singapore (for the same amount of pay). But our schools and universities need to come through with good and effective education so that our kids will not need to pay for additional training they should have already gotten in the first place. It is the telltale sign that things are not alright with the way we are educating our children. Even the elite universities seem to have fumbled the ball here.
In the meantime, let’s all practice our American accents and repeat after me: "Customer Service, how may I help you?"
The UST Publishing House, led by its director Dr. Mechelime Manalastas, published the milestone-setting book. It will be endorsed to universities and colleges offering communication courses. For more information, call the IABC secretariat at 750-5667, 892-9592 or 893-5369.
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