The Philippines was even set to beat giants like India, which the report called a mature contact-centre market, and China, an emerging market with a massive workforce and very cheap services.

The 2006 Asian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report was compiled by callcentres.net, which says it is the Asia-Pacific's leading call and contact-centre research and publishing company.

The study of 747 contact centres in the Philippines, India, Singapore, China, Malaysia and Thailand- commissioned by contact-centre company eTalk and tech giant Cisco Systems - assessed contact-centre strategy, operations, human-resource management, technology, customer service, channel management, outsourcing, key performance indicators and "management challenges".

The study estimated the total 576,000 individual call-centre operators in the countries studied would increase 23 per cent to 704,500 this year.

Abut 56 per cent of Asian contact centres are dedicated to customer service, 15 per cent to outbound sales, 14 per cent to technical support, 12 per cent to inbound sales and 2 per cent to collections.

Singapore's 19,000 operators and Malaysia's 28,000 are both projected to grow 32 per cent. China, with 130,000 operators, will grow 22 per cent and India 16 per cent from a current 270,000.

Thailand is projected to grow 33 per cent from its present capacity of 24,000 operators.

The Philippines with 105,000 seats would grow 33 per cent to 140,000.

Callcentres.net president Dr Catriona Wallace said contact centres in the Philippines had to confront challenges in human resources, disaster preparedness and technology to be competitive.

"Growth in the contact-centre industry in Asia was traditionally driven by the outsourcing sector. Now we are seeing strong growth, not only by the outsourcers, but also in contact centres servicing domestic markets," Wallace said. "In the Philippines, about 70 per cent of the industry services the local market and 30 per cent provides international service."

The study said growth in the industry was reflected in strong technology purchasing and upgrading plans for Asian contact centres. Up to 54 per cent of Asian contact centres plan to purchase new technology in 2007 and 62 per cent plan to upgrade existing technology. About 70 per cent of centres in the Philippines intend to purchase new technology in 2007.

The top three technologies to be purchased in 2007 will be for voice-over Internet protocol or VoIP, workforce management and call recording systems, said eTalk marketing chief Roger Woolley.

"The outsourcing sector appears to drive growth in innovation and technology adoption in the region, and this again is led by the Philippines," Wallace says.

"Cisco has seen growth rates of more than 80 per cent for our Unified Contact Centre business in the Asia-Pacific region.

The trend toward Internet protocol (IP)-based contact centres is driven by a highly-competitive business environment and increasingly tech-savvy customers who are demanding greater interaction," says KC Soh, Cisco director for solutions marketing in Asia Pacific.

"The IP-enabled contact centre is the way of the future," Wallace says.

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Asia News Network

Manila