Everest Group: PH posed to shape future of global center industry

The Philippines has en edge in being the "location of choice" by outsourcing clients as the global contact center industry transforms from an arbitrage-first to an experience-first model. This is the highlight of the white paper entitled "Philippines at the Helm of Delivering Costumer Experience of the Future" presented by global consulting and research firm Everest Group during the Contact Islands conference held at Shangri-Las Boracay Resort and Spa, Boracay Island.

"The Philippines has a unique opportunity  to not just adapt but to innovate and influence the change," said Everest Group Global Sourcing Partner H. Karthhik who presented the study on Day 1 of the two-day conference organized by the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP)." This will propel the Philippines to be at the helm of shaping future costumer experience."

The study underlined that while technology innovation will play a key role in upholding costumer experience, high-skilled agents will remain as the key for delivering required services.

"The contact center industry in the Philippines is rapidly evolving to meet the requirements of costumer experience delivery and will continue to have a strong  leading value preposition," Kathnik asserted. "Costumer experience will continue to be heavily dependent on high-quality talent with high-empathy skills, and the Philippines the leading provider of such talent."

He also emphasized the advantage brought about by the fact that the country has among the world's youngest  population (with median age of 23 years). "It forms the perfect bedrock for serving the millenial costumers," he said.

The analysis by Everest Group pointed out that local contact centers have already  started upgrading its capabilities to meet the changing requirements in the global industry environment. The study identified these current conditions of Philippine-based contact centers.

*Up to a third of the agents in best-in-class centers have already been trained to acquire multi-channel expertise.
*Robotic process automation (RPA) solutions are starting to be implemented like rule-based chatbots for simple business processes and costumer queries.
*Focus and investment on analytics for costumer experience delivery is growing although analytics for operational excellence still has the higher adaption.
*Companies are actively redesigning their recruitment and training approaches to increase focus on multi-national channel capabilities and technical skills.

Despite its strong position in adapting and instituting skills-upgrade of its agents, the country's contact center industry still needs to further strengthen its capabilities  to "shape the global future" of contact center services, according to Everest Group.