Call Centers: Boon or Bane for New Graduates?
With the country’s
high unemployment rate, new graduates and other new entrants to the labor
force are grateful for the presence of call centers which take in
thousands of them every week, regardless of the course taken. Concerned
voices however raise the issue of government molding the education system
to churn out graduates suited to the needs of the call center industry.
BY AVA DANLOG
Bulatlat
|
Under the subject
Advanced Communication for International Business or Comm 400 in the
University of the East in Manila, students are taught marketing, finance
and public speaking. Topics such as English proficiency and American
geography are tackled.
Call center representatives
|
Lara (not her real
name), a graduating engineering student, is taking such a subject.
Although completely unrelated to her course, she took up the
communications course as an elective to equip her with the skills needed
for employment after graduation.
Ironically, Lara
knows she would most likely end up not practicing her chosen profession.
She plans to apply as a call center agent in Makati right after
graduation. Doubting she will even pass the licensure exams, she knows it
would be difficult for her to compete for the few decent job openings
available to inexperienced engineering graduates like her. In addition,
she’s more than happy with the comparatively high basic salary offered in
the call center industry.
“Mecca” for new
graduates
Alarmingly, more and
more graduating students are looking at call centers as an option for
employment. Regardless of degree taken, thousands of fresh and old
graduates are hired by the call center industry every week.
A call center is a
communications-based company which serves as a support system for larger
companies in first world countries like the United States. Call or contact
centers handle customer complaints and inquiries and provide technical
support for a wide array of products and services like electronics, e-mail
management, mortgage, insurance, advertising, telecommunications and even
volunteer and charity work.
Basically, the work
is to receive from and make calls to foreign countries. There are two
categories of call centers: inbound and outbound calls. And there are
three types of accounts: telemarketing, customer service and technical
support. Telemarketing belongs to the inbound category. However, customer
service centers also engage in upselling, which means offering or selling
services.
Debts and the need to
lower cost structures caused by a troubled stock market, unstable economic
conditions and declining expenditure on Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) have made offshoring appealing to U.S. companies. ICT
advances have enabled multinational and transnational corporations to
decentralize certain operational areas like the handling of inbound and
outbound calls.
Years ago, the
Philippines was unknown in the provision of e-services in the world.
However, the improving technology and the deregulation of the
telecommunications industry in the country during the mid-1990s paved the
way for the launching of the call center industry. The Department of Trade
and Industry lists at least 37 call center companies in the country and
the number is growing. Major players include Convergys, PeopleSupport and
Etelcare.
The Filipinos’
edge
Since the industry
mainly caters to markets from the United States, United Kingdom and
Australia, call center agents are obliged to acquire the foreign accent
and study the geography and cultural mores of these foreign countries and
work on a graveyard shift. Being the third largest English speaking
country in the world and with a high literacy rate, the Philippines is
considered as one of the most competitive call center destinations in the
world.
Other factors that
make the country attractive to foreign companies are the cheap class A
office spaces, better power and telecommunications infrastructure, good
quality but cheap labor force and the support the government is all too
willing to extend to these foreign investors.
Graduates and even
undergraduates who pass the preliminary exams undergo a six-day English
skills training and product training for three weeks. After which the
agent trainee will be placed on the floor to attend to mock calls for
assessment. Agents are supposed to be able to type at least 25 words per
minute.
The basic pay for
call center agents ranges from P11,000 (US$200.98 at US$1=PhP54.73) to
P13,000 a month. In ICT Philippines, a call center that operates in the
Philippines, agents enjoy a monthly P2,500 food and transportation
allowance and a performance appraisal bonus amounting to P4,000. Often,
they are also offered spiffs like appliances, cellular phone loads and
gift checks to boost the sales per hour capacity of the employees. For
example, whoever first gets five sales per hour for the night wins a
prize. And an agent who hits the target quota sales gets an additional
P11,500 commission plus a 30-50 percent night differential. All in all, a
well-performing agent gets a gross monthly income of more than P31,000.
This, as opposed to the P8,000 entry level salary generally offered in
other sectors.
Yet, these are not
all. Call center agents receive benefits like SSS, health insurance,
Pag-ibig and salary loans. It is not a dead-end job either. Agents get the
chance to climb the corporate ladder in just a matter of three months.
Some call centers offer perks like free shuttle rides, free meals and
coffee and sleeping rooms and even karaoke rooms.
Most people find the
job easy. According to Weng, a Philosophy graduate and who has been
working for a call center selling mortgage services in Ortigas for 14
months now, “I find the job easy. When I go home, I go home. I don’t have
any paperwork. When I'm in the office, I work my brains out because I’m
already a team leader. But when I get home, I’m home. I don’t have
anything else to do.”
“Sunshine
industry”
The call center
industry is tagged as the “sunshine industry” by the government because of
its massive expansion, thus generating thousands of employment. It is the
fastest growing sector within the IT software and services industry. It is
not only sprouting in Metro Manila, but in other metropolitan areas as
well like Cebu, Baguio, Davao
and Pampanga. With an unemployment rate at 13 percent, the highest in
Southeast Asia, the call center industry is perceived as a rare bright
spot in the country’s ailing economy.
Thus, the Arroyo
government is putting high hopes in the ICT-enabled services sector for
the development of the economy. To realize its goal of placing the
Philippines in the “call center map of the world,” the government has
designated more than 96 special economic zones that offer tax breaks and
other incentives to foreign investors and is improving the
telecommunications and other basic infrastructure.
The available skilled
labor force however could not catch up with the demand of the industry.
Out of the 380,000 graduates produced annually, a mere five percent
qualifies as call center agents. In fact, only three to five percent of
applicants are taken in by the call center industry.
What is very alarming
is the government mainstreaming the education system to churn out
graduates that would fit the qualifications needed by the industry. In
this regard, the Technical Education and Skills Authority (TESDA) of the
Department of Labor and Employment has released a scholarship fund for
would-be contact center professionals. Malacañang mandated English as the
primary medium of instruction in both primary and secondary levels, aside
from placing more emphasis on Math and Science as preventive measures. On
the tertiary level, a number of schools all over the country, like UE in
Recto, are now offering the subject Advanced Communication for
International Business.
As remedial measures,
formal training and certification programs for call centers have already
started in training centers like AHEAD Learning Systems and the Avaya
Customer Contact Training Center (ACCTC) located at the Mapua Institute of
Technology. Call centers like People Support (Phils) Inc. has already
started conducting special classes in the University of
San Jose-Recoletos
(USJ-R) on basic contact center education for graduating students.
University of the
Philippines student leader Atom Araullo, himself a graduating student,
says that this move on the part of the government is reflective of the
dominance of other countries in the economic affairs of the country. This
tendency is nothing new since based from history, the government has been
mainstreaming the education system of the country based on the demands of
the global market for semi-skilled workers.
Not so bright
after all
After a deeper
analysis, the exponential growth of the call center does not paint a very
bright picture after all. Although the quality of the Filipino labor force
lures in investors, the undoubtedly more decisive factor would be the
cheaper labor cost. While the salary rate is comparatively higher from the
minimum wage popularly offered nowadays, the practice of developed
countries to exploit the cheap labor pool of underdeveloped countries
would eventually lead to lower wages, especially so since 60 percent of
the operational cost of a contact center in the country goes to labor,
according to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
Research also shows
concerns on the health costs for those working the graveyard shifts.
According to Rebecca Stoll, an analyst for US research group Gartner,
after touring call centers in the country, “you can just work at night so
long before you burn out.” This suggests that prolonged call center
employment may pose several health risks for the agents.
Most workers are
denied to right to unionize. There is lack of job security and the labor
force is not trained for skills that would benefit the country. At the
other end of the line, agents are often subjected to racial
discrimination, harassment and verbal abuse, and yet obliged to remain
unruffled and calm. Weng adds, “Stressful, especially during the early
part. But then I have to learn to detach myself. I sometimes feel like a
robot, I’m not learning anything.”
Bubble industry
Analysts predict that
aside from facing stiff competition from other countries, the market would
soon be saturated and the industry will burst. This is the reason why
mainstreaming the education system just to cater to the demands of the
call center industry would be a big blow to the economy.
According to Melvir
Buela, an undergraduate engineering student from UP Diliman, the education
system should be attuned to what the country really needs. He added that
for undergraduates looking for jobs to save money for the rising tuition
rates, call centers are the best option since the shift and the high pay
are beneficial. However, he does not approve of the brain drain to the
semi-skilled call centers.
Araullo says that
graduates flocking to call centers imply that many are finding it harder
and harder to find decent jobs. So instead of putting all the
resources into sustaining the growth of call centers in the country, the
government should instead exhaust all means in localizing industries in
order to generate sustainable employment for the 31 million unemployed
Filipinos.
Araullo adds that
students should always view call centers as an option until basic reforms
are put into place. “Students should not be ashamed. It’s a decent job.
But then they have to think, be curious and be open to the potential that
they themselves would be the key to in initiating positive changes in the
future.” Bulatlat
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