Call center companies see revenues growing just 15% this year

The local contact center industry will grow slower this year because of high operating costs and a shrinking customer base, the industry’s organization said in a press briefing late Monday.

Benedict Hernandez, president of Contact Centers Association of the Philippines and Accenture’s service delivery head in the Philippines, told reporters that group members were looking at 15-percent to 20-percent revenue growth this year, or by about $1 billion from the level in 2008.

Revenues of the contact or call center industry grew 21 percent in 2008 to $5 billion year-on-year. Total seats went up 13.8 percent while contact agents grew 13.2 percent to 275,000.

Hernandez said members of the organization posted an average revenue growth of 16.7 percent in the first nine months of the year and added 40,000 more seats.

Hernandez said contact centers also moderated the salary raise this year to cope with increasing operational expenses and sustain the growth of the industry.

“This year’s inflation is believed to be the lowest ever,” he said.

Aegis PeopleSupport Philippines president Rainerio Borja, however, said the “wages that we offer in this industry is still significantly higher over other industries,” adding that contact centers still attracted a large number of graduates and professionals from the other fields.

Ray Roxas Chua, chairman of the Commission on Information and Communication Technology, said the Philippines must maintain its global competitiveness in labor costs to lure more investors and trigger expansions.

Meanwhile, CCAP and PricewaterhouseCoopers Financial Advisors Inc. released the first of the four-part quarterly survey series on the contact center industry, entitled “Contact Centers: Forerunners of Resiliency.”– Jeremiah F. de Guzman, Manila Standard Today