Philippines overtakes India as hub of call centres

MANILA, Nov 28 (New York Times): Americans calling the customer service lines of their airlines, phone companies and banks are now more likely to speak to agents named Mark in Manila than people named Bharat in Bangalore. Over the past several years, a quiet revolution has been reshaping the call centre business: the rise of the Philippines, a former US colony that has a large population of young people who speak lightly accented English and, unlike many Indians, are steeped in US culture. More Filipinos - about 400,000 - than Indians now spend their nights talking to mostly US consumers, according to industry officials, as companies like AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and Expedia have hired call centres here, or even built their own. The jobs have come from the US, Europe and, to some extent, India as outsourcers followed their clients to the Philippines. India, where offshore call centres first took off in a big way, fields as many as 350,000 call centre agents, according to some industry estimates. The Philippines, which has a population one-tenth as big as India's, overtook India this year, according to Jojo Uligan, executive director of the Contact Centre Association of the Philippines. The growing preference for the Philippines reflects in part the maturation of the outsourcing business and in part a preference for US English. In the early days, the industry focused simply on finding and setting up shop in countries with large English-speaking populations and low labour costs, which mostly led them to India. But executives say they are now increasingly identifying places best suited for specific tasks. India remains the biggest destination by far for software outsourcing, for instance.