Outbound Call Centre

The outbound call centre is becoming more recognized and utilized in the UK, Australia and other “Queen’s English” countries.  It’s not commonly known but the whole concept of a ‘call centre’ originated with a British company…British Overseas Airways in fact…back in the early 1990’s.

As the story goes, they set up an entity in New Delhi to provide certain back office services for their operations regionally, it expanded, they eventually began to offer excess capacity to other companies and later some entrepreneurs from their company set up business process outsourcing services (including an outbound call centre) that any company could contract with for both outbound call centre services and other back office services.

The uniqueness and value of an offshore call centre (both inbound and outbound call centre) because immediately obvious. It was initially the Yanks who first ran with the idea but it was long after that that Brits in the UK and Aussies in Australia began to try it out too. And they liked it!

The phenomenon of global competitiveness that we’ve seen come a head in recent times actually started over two decades ago.  The inbound and outbound call centre industry has been part of it in that Filipino call centre agents, both inbound call centre and outbound call centre types, have provided the low cost but also highly efficient labor that UK and Australian businesses needed to stay competitive in global markets.

Nowadays household name companies in the UK and Australia are integrating outsourced offshore inbound and outbound call centre operations into their marketing plans.  It gives them the flexibility they need to plan while reducing their capital and management exposure.

Generally speaking UK and Australian companies can reduce their cost of call centre labor by up to 60% when they outsource offshore.  Plus, they get well trained, courteous call centre agents who really appreciate their jobs and turn up for work highly motivated every day.

The outbound call centre represents a unique connection of geography, culture and business practices that results in a win-win-win situation for the call centre host countries, the clients and their consumer/customers.

The outbound call centre saves clients 30-60% of the money they’d normally be spending sourcing those services onshore.  What do they do with the saving?

The answer is that they reinvest it into processes that make more sales locally.  Using an outbound call centre frees up capital that cost-squeezed companies in the UK and Australia can put back into local sales staff, more local publicity, product quality, or perhaps just dividends for owners or stockholders.

The outbound call centre can do so many things that it’s now possible for UK and Australian companies to reduce their purely local footprint to a mere fraction of what it once was.  The outbound call centre can make sales, they can do customer service, they can do tech support, and they can even provide virtual administrative support such as appointment setting and rescheduling.

No doubt about it…the outbound call centre concept continues to revolutionize the whole concept of doing business.  A lot of people thought that ‘modern business’ was born back in the 60’s with the advent of the transistor and all the technical advances of that generation.  But modern telecommunications, as used by the modern outbound call centre, has enabled call centre agents in developing countries to perform meaningful tasks for UK and Australian companies and customers.

In a sense, the services offered by outbound call centres have enabled the agents of the offshore outsourced outbound call centre to ‘plug into’ the economy of their client countries.  The wages earned by the outbound call centre agents are somewhat based on the ‘scale’ of the client companies simply because it’s what they’re accustomed to paying.  In all cases these wages are considerably higher than local wage scale.  That’s why jobs in a outbound call centre are so highly sought after…because they pay more.

In a very real sense, this kind of international business relationship does as much, if not more, than anything diplomats do toward fostering international friendship and understanding.  Over the course of several months working in an offshore outbound call centre these agents get to know at least a certain segment of the economy and consumer psychology of the clients they service.  Generally speaking, it’s a positive learning experience.

The Philippines is ranked as the world’s largest and leading call centre destination. Companies such as Vodafone, British Airways and HSBC, just to name a few, have all been doing it.  They’ve been outsourcing their inbound and outbound call centre requirements to the Philippines for many years now.

 Whereas inbound call processes tend to be more passive and reactive, outbound call process and outbound call centre services tend to be the ones more aggressively oriented toward generating money and profits for the companies that employ them.

 The primary motivation for offshore outsourcing their outbound call centre processes to countries such as the Philippines is the significantly lower cost and the dependable, high quality of service. This is the reason that outbound call centre companies in the Philippines proudly have proudly supported such global brands such as Microsoft, Dell, Google, and Apple since the birth of the Philippine BPO industry in the year 2000.

 It is therefore not surprising that an ever increasing number of British companies have also been migrating their business process outsourcing requirements to outbound call centres in the Philippines.

 The large majority of outbound call centres in the Philippines are located within Metro Manila and support customer care and technical support related functions for their clients.  This integration of incremental front office and back office business processes is made possible only by the high quality communication systems that exist today.

 These systems, as employed by the Philippines outbound call centre industry, have brought better service and lower prices to consumers in the UK and Australia and more opportunity, improved infrastructure and increased GNP to the Philippines.  The Philippines, and especially the Manila area where most of the outbound call centres are located, got a fortuitous head start in the BPO/Call Center industry because of the high quality communications infrastructure left behind by the departing US Military in the 1990’s.

When major BPOs began to move into the Philippines, setting up their own outbound call centre for their internal use, they found that Filipino call centre agents had the right mix of attitude and skill to provide great service.  Thus the outbound call centre industry in the Philippines began to grow and their ongoing relationship with so many UK and Australian companies was born.

Often times, as some businesses reach plateaus in their business growth, they reach a point where they realize they need to consider offshore outsourcing to BPO’s and the offshore outsourced inbound call centre industry in the Philippines.  As they become truly globally competitive they realize that the incremental cost savings of outsourcing their business processes to the Philippines amounts to a very appreciable sum of money…..money that could be used for other things.

 More and more companies with household brands well known in their respective local markets are looking at the offshore outsourcing business model.  Outsourcing to their inbound and outbound call centre in the Philippines allows them to ‘stay home’ with the majority of their corporate presence yet outsource critical parts of it that result in bottom line cost savings that the stockholders like.

To identify a capable outbound call centre you have to ask questions. Some of the most important questions you will have to ask yourself first. One , what do I expect from the outbound call centre? Expectations need to be clearly defined and communicated with the outbound call centre that you intend to partner with. Often outbound campaigns fail simply because the objectives and expectations have not clearly been communicated. Another key question to ask is cost? Does it make financial sense to seek a high performance outbound call centre e.g. in the Philippines or should I keep the calling on shore. The trend in this regard is clear. An ever-increasing number of companies form the UK and Australia are outsourcing their outbound call centre requirements to leading contact centres in the Philippines. Apart from cost, quality also plays a key role in the outsourcing decision making process.

Companies that have been migrating their business processes to Philippine-based outbound call centres typically save anywhere between 50-65%. Today, 7 out of 10 Fortune 500 companies are either outsourcing to Philippine-based call centres  or have set up their own captive operation in the country. HSBC, for example, operates multiple BPO facilities in the Philippines. The company employs more than 5,000 Filipinos to handle various back office processes for its customers. Other companies such as Vodafone, Telstra and Optus have been outsourcing large proportions of their in- and outbound requirements to contact centres in Metro Manila.