Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) to Philippines is often touted as a cost-effective way of slashing running costs and managing to stay operational. However, if you are only thinking about the money you will save you are certainly missing the point.
The focus on moving your business to BPOs in the Philippines should never be made on cost alone. Yes, it can be cheaper, of course, but you also need to consider the quality of your company’s service and whether or not it will suffer as a result of moving offshore.
For any company, the customer experience is often the only real difference between competing brands, so you need to be sure that switching to BPOs in the Philippines does not result in a loss of customers.
For the many companies who have moved their BPO requirements to the Philippines, the experience has not only improved front and back-office processes, it has enhanced the customer experience too.
So why is the Philippines such a good destination for BPO?
The Philippines has invested a great deal of money on education, technology and providing a fantastic infrastructure in communications. BPO companies in the Philippines are part of the economy’s lifeblood so are very highly valued across this island nation. No other nation in the world relies so much upon this growing industry. It is highly respected across the country and attracts the best and brightest graduates. And with the high standard of education; the Philippines has one of the highest literacy rates globally and a focus on IT, English, and western business practices. You have a highly trained workforce at your disposal.
Compare that attitude now with the general opinion of call centre work and back office support in Australia.
Do you have a willing and able workforce at your disposal?
The sad truth is that many young Australians with the comparable education and training of the Filipinos are not as committed to providing such great customer service. Staffing is often an issue, and often company morale can be low. In addition, call centre work just does not have the same cachet in Australia as it does in the Philippines. Very few people spend years studying for a business degree, for example, in order to work in a call centre. By contrast, this is a well-paid profession in the Philippines and is something to aspire to.
It’s not just about being able to do this work effectively…
Yes, we get it that the BPOs in the Philippines are keen, but in addition, they are often better at it as well.
The Philippines shares a similar time zone with Australia as well as strong cultural ties. All the call centre agents speak excellent English with a fairly neutral accent that can be adapted to the Australian speech patterns. This means that your customers will be able to chat with your customer service department as well as have their needs and concerns addressed efficiently.
BPO includes customer-facing tasks such as customer service and non-customer facing tasks such as content moderation. Whatever your BPO requirements they can be met by switching to one of the quality BPOs in the Philippines.
So does BPO to the Philippines save money?
Yes, it does save a lot of money, but you have to be realistic. There’s a cost to providing excellent BPO services such as customer support, even in a relatively inexpensive country like the Philippines.
If you go offshore, you will automatically save 35-50% on cost even if you use a premium industry-leading outsourcing provider such as PITON-Global. However, trying to reduce the cost by an extra 10-20% is just not worth the squeeze.
In life, we tend to get what we pay for so if your reason for moving your BPO requirements to the Philippines is solely to get it as cheap as possible you could put you and your company in the danger zone. By contrast, keeping your financial savings on a realistic level will not only save you money, but your customer service and back office support will also undoubtedly see major improvements too.
