ETelecare Announces Philippine Call Center

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

ETelecare Global Solutions, a business process outsourcing vendor, has announced the construction of a new service delivery center, to be named eTelecare Center, in Makati City, located in the SM Cyberzone on Buendia Avenue.

 

With a total floor area of 18,000 square meters, the center will be one of the largest facilities in the Philippines dedicated solely to business process outsourcing.

 

ETelecare expects to employ at least 3,000 employees at the new facility, along with another 3,000 new employees at its previously announced Annex@Shaw facility in the Mandaluyong City center, which is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2007.

 

Once these new facilities are fully operational, the company's total headcount in the Philippines will be 13,000. The company also has over 2,600 employees in the United States, spread among seven call centers in Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota.

 

ETelecare won the 2005 Employer of the Year award from the Personnel Management Association of the Philippines. It provides a range of services, including technical support, customer service, sales and customer retention from both onshore and offshore locations.

 

In May eTelecare announced it would invest in its sixth delivery center in the Philippines. The center, located in the Annex@Shaw facility in Mandaluyon City, Metro Manila, will open in the third quarter of 2007 and employ more than 3,000 when fully deployed.

 

Funding for the new center comes from eTelecare's recently completed initial public offering of American Depository Shares. eTelecare is the first Philippine-incorporated business process outsourcing company, and the second Filipino company overall, to trade on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

 

 "We plan to invest a significant portion of the proceeds from our IPO in further expansion in the Philippines," added Fred Ayala, Chairman of eTelecare.

 

The Annex@Shaw facility will be situated on a 13,000-square-meter site on Shaw Boulevard. The center will be eTelecare's 13th overall and sixth in the Philippines, including existing sites in Makati City, Quezon City, Muntinlupa City and two in Cebu City.

 

Earlier this spring eTelecare earned six "Top 50 Teleservices Agencies" rankings, awards sponsored by Customer Inter@ction Solutions magazine. Since its inception in 1986, this ranking has been used as a benchmark for large capacity/sized teleservices agencies.

 

Published in the March and April 2007 issues of the magazine for outbound and inbound categories, respectively, the rankings listed eTelecare in the following six separate categories: Outbound Domestic, Inbound International, Inbound Interactive, Outbound International, Overall Inbound/Outbound and Inbound Domestic.