Poor English – a Threat to the Philippine Call Centers?

DESPITE the Philippines is considered as one of the third largest English speaking countries in Asia yet the report released by the US State Department, in its “2007 Investment Climate Statement” this month cited that the “English language proficiency, while still better than in other Southeast Asian nations, is declining in the Philippines.”

This report is a ticking bomb that caused alarm to the Philippine Government, the business sectors and especially the business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, which serves as a foundation of call centers in the Philippines.

“High levels of corruption, ongoing efforts to reform the judicial system, weak but improving protection of intellectual property rights, the slow pace of energy sector reform and privatization, the need for further fiscal reforms to boost depressed spending levels for infrastructure and social services, and political uncertainties combined to dampen investor interest,” are the major considerations highlighted by the US Government on basing their statement.

I learned that various sectors put the pressure to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on how she will address the report. She kept on saying that English should use as primary medium of instruction in all schools nationwide. In fact, Mrs. Arroyo highlighted stressed that “knowledge is the greatest creator of wealth”. With this development, the President allocated PhP150 billion, which is PhP29 billion increased last year in education budget. She stressed that that almost young Filipino professionals are employed in a call center in the Philippines and received enjoyable salary package from the different contact centers they are working for. She also reported that most schools in the country have accessed to the Internet because of the program designed by the Department of Education (DepEd).

The report alarmed the business councils both foreign and domestic because it might cause panic to our call center industry, which one of the vibrant industries in the country today. The business council noted that the Philippines is the home of the world largest call center companies aside from India, China, Singapore and among others.

The US State Department noted that “the comparative advantages the Philippines once enjoyed vis-à-vis its neighbors in attracting foreign investment need to be restored in order to attract more investment and support higher growth.”

Meanwhile, Beau Rudd, chief executive officer of Unique Interaction encourage his call center agents to always use English as the first language. Mr. Rudd said that there are so many big call centers in the Philippines and they have a strict policy about English only when you come into the office.

“I have been trying to figure it out for a long time and the only reason I thought it was for is because the customer might hear Tagalog in the background. The reason these company have put this in place is because of this, when you are always taking in English you will always think in English,” he stressed.

It sounds funny but all Filipinos may speak good English but they are converting it in the mind from Tagalog and the problem with them is Tagalog is all backwards, he added.

In a call center in the Philippines, it employed about 200,000 call center representatives working in different companies. This is according to one of the executives in a call center in the Philippines reported during the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) roadmap conference held last July 11 and 12 this year. Call center managers relayed that this business remained to be a sunshine industry and continue to grow faster. The CCAP further revealed that the industry needs at least 500,000 contact center agent professionals by 2010, a target the organization has come up with after extrapolating its current demand but considering the 19-percent yearly attrition. CCAP is now composed of 34 contact center companies based in the Philippines.

This is no joke. Losing employees for call centers will only reflect that we, Filipinos failed to implement the English program policy. Or shall I say, the government is incompetent enough to improve the country’s learning English skills. The good focal point, however, that we Filipinos are dedicated to learn this language in order for us to have edge especially when applying for jobs. Even call center companies expressed their statement that deterioration of English sounds “painful”. These call center leaders blamed the soap operas dubbed in Pilipino, and too much focusing on cell phone text messaging. The education sector blamed the influence of pop culture and the domestic media, where the dominant language is Taglish, a combination of Tagalog and English.

The US government further outlined that the country’s fiscal conditions, helped recently by new revenue legislation, seem nonetheless to be improving and the general economic outlook is cautiously optimistic for 2007. The figures indicates that the Philippines’ GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth accelerated from 5% in 2005 to 5.4 percent as of September 2006, spurred by a recovery in post-drought agricultural harvests, more robust export growth, the continued strength of remittances from Filipinos overseas, and a vibrant call center business.