Virtual Call Center

Is agent attrition going to threaten the call center indstry’s expansion? That’s a concern raised by the Contact Center Association of the Philippines at their two-day annual summit. The industry now has a hiring rate of just 8 percent and loses one out of every eight new hires.

In fact, they’re taking it so seriously that they have announced plans to establish a Global Competitiveness Institute and a Human Resource Council to “address issues in enhancing employee talent, developing effective retention policies, and addressing labor disputes as part of efforts to ensure sustainable expansion for this sector,” according to BusinessWorld Online.

CCAP President Benedict C. Hernandez remarked that "A 15 percent annual growth rate becomes more difficult as the base grows bigger. One of the threats to the development of the Philippine contact center industry is the fact that we are not producing enough people who can qualify for the job."

Jojo J. Uligan, CCAP executive director, noted glumly that “on average, a call center has an attrition rate of 60 percent, but 20 percent of this 60 percent leave the industry altogether," for an industry attrition rate of 12 percent.

The industry will have 406,000 positions by the end of 2011, but is expected to have 816,000 seats by 2016.

In June TMC’s (News - Alert) Susan J. Campbell wrote that for the past decade, the Phillipines has been an attractive call center outsourcing destination due to its educated, English-speaking population.

2011 has been no exception as, the Philippines now leads India in call center jobs, employing 350,000 compared with India’s 330,000, according to the Contact Center Association of the Philippines.

The report targeted a 12 percent hiring rate, saying the industry needs to improve the qualifications of English instructors to reach that goal. Underlining the problem, Hernandez says “many of our English teachers in our universities are not even qualified to teach this language. More people are getting hired even without college degrees and some are even requiring only a high school degree."