Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia (NYSE: WB), the nation's fourth-largest bank based on assets, entered the California banking market in 2006 with a small acquisition in Southern California and the purchase of Oakland-based Golden West Financial Corp., which operated World Savings. The bank's blue-and-green logo is already arriving in the Bay Area. They announced recently that they are opening a call call center in the Philippines.
.......And now my ten cents worth...
A good friend who is based here in Los Angeles asked me a few years back about opening a "call center" in the Philippines. I made some phone calls and connected him to other business folks as well as government compliance people. The idea that came to mind when I heard "call center" then was a group of about 30 people handling phones for his export import business. We made some connections, we talked about T1 Phone lines, buying bulk phone minutes in the hundreds of thousands (minutes), and Mayor's permit, location, the usual.
What escaped me then, and this is actually a big economic and social change in the Philippines right now, is that a "call center" is far from that. It could be contracted globally to anybody !!. Charter Broadband, Dell, Citi and the other big guys from the U.S. and Europe are going to the Philippines for affordable and very well trained labor pool.
Amazingly, for the past 5 years, the influx of "call centers" in the Philippines have quintripled, employing hundreds of thousands of our college graduates, who, without these call centers, would be under-employed and maybe on the worst case, un-employed. (Anim ang trabaho - kasi anim ployed).
Much more to my amazement, these call center "representatives" used to have been selected from affluent schools like De La Salle, Ateneo, UP, etc, and some were actually trained at accredited "International Schools." Guess what, now, Companies and Schools have invested in their own call center training programs and expanded the labor pool to all Filipinos who meet requirements.
The latest census showed too, that a typical "call rep" earns double the salary of an entry level bank employee in the Philippines, most of them are single, call centers are a 24/7 operations (they hire 3x the amount of employees than other industries), they are fun loving and very courteous, and most of all, they have suddenly a huge amount of disposable income. The result, more spending power towards the Philippine economy. As I interviewed a call center rep, she even boasted of having a Starbucks coffee shop and a McDonalds on the call center building where they worked. So, if you happen to need phone support for your latest laptop, dryer, car or any gizmos you just bought, and your call is routed to the Philippines, be proud. These call center reps deliver world class quality and service. It just makes me proud again to be a Filipino.
(Jay Fermin)