As soon as one utters the word Call Centre or Contact Centre in India, the first thing that comes to the mind of most people are high salaries, luxurious offices, sometimes monotonous jobs,   inculcating aspects of the western culture and  Agents switching jobs at the drop of an hat.  Then there is the ugly side of jobs being offered and then pulled back without any notice. More...

It looks like the end is near for the Dell Global contact centers operating at two locations in the Philippines. It seems apparent that Dell will be outsourcing their contact centers again to established outsourcers. This development has gotten some of its call center employees in a state of panic and confusion for the past two weeks. More...

Sutherland BPO which recently established a call centre in Davao City, Philippines has deliberately refused to continue employment of a whole batch of graduated trainees. This after the company found out that the members of this batch were the ones who had contacted a very popular national investigative TV show to report shady developments in the Davao location. More...

Last year’s merger between BPO’s Clientlogic and Sitel has not become a favorable event for a lot of call center agents especially on Sitel’s part. According to the merger, with Clientlogic becoming the major stakeholder for the merger, they have absolute power over the administration of the whole company. This included the decision to reduce current salaries of Sitel call center agents by 25 percent in Philippines. More...

The call center industry in the Philippines, like in India, has provided a great boost to employment. It’s the sunshine industry for the Philippines providing tens of thousands of jobs yearly. Sadly, even as they provide jobs for multitudes of Filipinos, call centers in the Philippines are unbelievably notorious in violating labor laws in the country. Take for example the latest case of mass termination of employees from Western Wats in Mactan Cebu City. More...

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. More...

The popularity of Six Sigma in the BPO world has spread and reached the Philippines only recently. More and more contact centers are now embracing six sigma as a tool to provide more value in services they offer their clients. It is in no doubt the Philippine call centers are attempting to duplicate Indian BPO’s who have successfully used this methodology to improve their business. More...

The guillotine finally fell on the Epixtar call center last month as a local court has denied its petition for to continue operating in the Philippines through its proposed “rehabilitation plan”.  Epixtar was accused of falsifying sales figures in India in 2003. More...

I don’t know about how much Genpact supervisors and managers are getting in India, but in the Philippines they are the most highly paid in the industry. My snitch in Genpact Human Resources rang  me with the details of the salary package of their managers and I must say I was a bit surprised with how much they are getting paid to work and stay in Genpact! More...

Last month, Saffron Global Services, a Gurgaon-based BPO with a capacity of 1000 Agents held a lavish Diwali function.  The chief guest was Mr. Rastogi,  CEO of Tulip UK, the London based parent company of saffron (www.connectsaffron.com) and Maple (sister concern of Saffron based at Noida).  More...