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The call center industry is one of the fastest growing business in the Philippines today. It provides a wide array of opportunities to many Filipino citizens to earn a bounty of money locally. They need not to go abroad to look for the greener pastures because this career offers a big chance to individuals which has potentials, not only to become successful leaders, but also as promising income generators. There are a lot of call center companies in the country for the job-seekers to choose from. Convergys, People Support Center, HSBC, Etelecare Global Solutions, Advanced Contact Solutions, Sykes, Sitel, APAC Customer Services, and many other more. Most of which are located in the central business districts of Manila, especially in the city of Makati. They all offer a more competitive salary compared to other white collar jobs. The monthly compensation of an agent on the entry level is actually comparable to that of the monthly income of a civil engineer or a government elementary school teacher (15K-18K).

The presence of call center careers is booming on different job fairs nationwide. It is very evident on different shopping malls, schools, public auditoriums, and even on some government offices. The competition among these companies is pretty stiff because of the expanding nature of the business. They need to hire a desirable number of competent employees to work for their clients. They usually vary on bargaining basic salaries and on the packaging of different benefits (medical and dental alike) that the agents could get upon employment and regularization.

Being a part of this industry doesn’t require high educational attainment. As long as you are confident that you are a good English communicator, you are then assured to join the line of call center professionals. IQ of course is a plus on making good impressions and reputation to your future employer.

The clients of these call center companies are American business people. The customers whom they deal with are also Americans and some other citizens from other countries but are now living in the States. Sprint Wireless, Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless, DirectTV, Microsoft, Dell Computers, The New York Times, and many other Fortune 500 companies are the gigantic businesses, which they render their services for. The call center agents’ speak with the clients’ customers to nourish their businesses and thus generating bigger profits. The agents, along with the supervision of their team leaders and other superiors, assist their customers in placing their orders, fixing their problems regarding the services that they have, and to attend to their other needs as customers of a specific product.

There are three major categories on a call center company to choose from. It could be the Customer Care Service, Sales, or the Technical Support. The Customer Care Service specializes on the different problems of the customers regarding questions on their bills, features of their services, directory assistance, and other program-related inquiries. The representatives and the leaders on this department are trained to answer all the questions of the callers/customers as much as possible. The people on this department are skilled on handling irate customers and to provide the utmost customer satisfaction to every caller.

The second category is Sales. The agents and the supervisors here are trained on consultative selling on offering the clients’ services to both existing and prospective customers. We could differentiate Sales into two divisions, which are Inbound and Outbound. Inbound Sales representatives receive calls from customers to place their orders or to avail some services offered by the clients. This is the safer side of Sales because most of the callers already have the intentions on availing the services or simply placing their orders, and thus closing a sale more promptly. Consultative selling or merely order-taking makes this side more glorious than the Outbound Sales. Compared to Inbound, Outbound Sales is a lot more arduous because the representatives here are the people who will call the existing and prospective customers to take advantage more services and promotions at the moment. It is harder than inbound selling because the customers don’t have any idea of what the call is all about in the first place. The representatives here must be more convincing, more enthusiastic, more competitive, more aggressive, and more eager to close a sale and to hit their goals for the day. The sweet part of being a Sales agent is that on commissions. The agents get some percentage (depending on the prerogative of the company where they are in) to every sale that they close. Some top Sales agents earn a better pot of money than that of their basic salaries.

The third known category is Technical Support. The people in this category handle the technical issues of the customers regarding the services that they have from their specific service providers. They focus on fixing mechanical and electrical failures, routine maintenance, from normal wear and tear, troubleshooting, and the likes. If the Customer Care Service and the Sales are the artistic arms of the call center companies, the Technical Support is the scientific arm that gives life to the company itself. The compensation of the Technical Support Representatives is a bit bigger than the basic compensations of Customer Care Service and Sales agents, considering the scientific nature of their job objective.

The life of a call center professional is very simple. It doesn’t require someone to bring some paperwork at home to meet some deadlines. I could describe this a s a happy-go-lucky profession because of its light nature. Working on a graveyard shift, considering the time zones of USA, is a must though it’s really fun, exciting, and enjoyable. Call center people could party all they want during general assemblies; just like team-building that occur every month at the expense of the company. They could also have all their time after their nine-hour-shift (with one one-hour-lunch-break and two 15-minute-breaks). The only downside of this career is the tendency of being fed-up sometime in the middle of the career due to the repetitive routine that the agents do almost everyday. One could handle it up anyway by making some fun in the middle of the boring shift. An agent could formulate some good rebuttals on building good rapport with the customers, thus providing customer satisfaction, or could just play jackstones while waiting for the next call. (Laughs)

This profession is a good ground to develop one’s interpersonal communication skills, although its nature of practice is in form of a computer-mediated communication. But still it offers a good opportunity to hone one’s self-worth that contributes to the personal growth and development of the person concerned. Interactions here are culture-bound that teaches someone to be more sensitive and cautious when speaking to anybody else, especially to people with different cultural orientations. In this manner, the call center agents tend to exemplify on their communication skills and thus making them better people.

It is also not easy to be a call center professional, especially to the entry level positions wherein they need to become agents first before they could soar high and higher for the greener pasture that everybody is looking for. They need to adapt to the graveyard nature of the job. They need to train themselves to speak better, if not fluently, in English. And most of all, they need to become good, if not the best, marketers to hit their goals at the end of every shift.

The social stigma that the Call Center Industry in the Philippine Business setting is the bin for hopeless Degree holders is unfair because they wouldn’t know how does it really works until they give it a try. These professionals need to be competent and excellent in order for them to defy all the odds and outrank other professionals from other fields of expertise.