Dell Philippines BPO: 400 risk losing their jobs
By Juan Dela Cruz

A large number of call center employees are very fearful they may lose their livelihood in less than a month if their call center management does not do anything about their situation. A long time rumor has finally turned into reality, Telus call center which is one of the biggest call centers in the Philippines and formerly Ambergris solutions, will be losing all their Dell accounts by February 2008. My sources from inside Telus reveal that employees in their Dell accounts are becoming increasingly de-motivated as they see indications of the impeding demise of their account.

Their Dell people are now being told to finish up pending cases and other tasks to make sure everything is prepared before Dell departs with Telus around February. These developments have dampened the enthusiasm of current employees and resulting in increasing number of absences and attrition.

On Telus’ side, Dell’s departure will result into major income loses because Dell is considered a major source of income for their Philippine site. Telus management has repeatedly promised affected employees that they will be shifted to new accounts coming in to replace Dell but my source tells me this has yet to be seen. If nothing turns out the way Telus has promised its employees, 300 agents plus 100 support personnel will be put on floating status or worse be laid-off as a result of this development.

On a larger scale, Dell’s departure will not only be limited at Telus. Most other call centers that handle calls for them will be pulling out as well. Outsourcers who handle different lines of business for Dell such as Etelecare Global Solutions, Sitel and Teleperformance will likely suffer the same fate as Telus. The rumors of Dell severing their connections with most outsourcers here in the Philippines have been floating in online communities for a long time. I believe they have planned this massive pull out to concentrate all their business segments in their own established call center facility in Manila.

I wonder how this development will affect outsourcers for Dell in India. My sources in Dell tell me about their few outsourcing sites spread across India. If this phenomena repeats in India, it sure is going to be a bad start in 2008 for a number of call centers in both sides of the continent.

(For questions or comments, please email me at 1delacruise at gmail.com)