BPOs on expansion mode in Philippines

Bangalore: Indian BPO firms are expanding their contact centre operations in the Philippines to handle growing demand.

Unlike their IT services counterparts, BPO firms are largely unaffected by the slowdown and continue to see strong volumes as clients of their customers still have to be serviced. Also, some customers are looking to offshore more processes to cut costs. New client wins are adding to volumes.

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Companies such as Hinduja Global Solutions, Wipro BPO and WNS Global are ramping up their presence in the Philippines, which has emerged as a hub for voice-based customer services. Almost all Indian vendors offer a significant chunk of these services from the Philippines.

Hinduja Global is setting up a second delivery centre with a capacity of up to 900 seats in Manila. “We expect it to go live by July,” said Partha DeSarkar, CEO of Hinduja Global, adding that the company’s expansion was mainly driven by American clients’ preference for services to be delivered from the Philippines.

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DeSarkar expects good growth in the Philippines, largely from sectors such as health insurance and banking. “I would say the Philippines is becoming increasingly popular. Growth is coming from new as well as existing clients,” he added.

Hinduja Global has some 2,000 employees working in the island nation.

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Besides better customer service delivery, cultural affinity of Filipinos to Americans are the key factors that are attracting the customers’ interest in the Philippines, said Jimit Arora, Research Director, Everest Research Institute.

“There could be some impact on the new business activity but BPOs still have to serve the existing clients of their customers, which is a sizeable part of the business,” said Arora.

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Giving an example, he said financial institutions may have to make more collection calls to their customers to receive payments, and this would drive up volume for a BPO.

WNS Global Service, which delivers voice-based and finance and accounting services from the Philippines, plans to ramp up operations by doubling headcount to about 1,000 within a short span, Neeraj Bhargava, CEO, WNS, told Business Line earlier this year.

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“Based on the strong client demand, our Manila delivery centre is growing ahead of plans. In a short span of 12 months since launch, we have over 500 employees delivering contact centre services to several clients,” said Anup Gupta, COO, WNS.

Recent media reports suggested that Wipro BPO was looking at opening a second call centre in the Philippines within this year. Wipro is conducting due diligence on potential sites, the report said, quoting a company official. However, when contacted, a Wipro spokesperson said the company will not be able to confirm the news as it is in the silent period before the quarterly results.

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