THE future of call center agents

Manila has emerged as the best call center hub in the world, thanks to the large pool of Filipino talents delivering and receiving voice calls to and from different countries. Call center executives say the country will likely keep its status as number one in the world for voice calls, even as it strives to put key measures in place to also become number one in the non-voice segment.

Call Center Association of the Philippines executive director Jojo Uligan, in an interview with the newest online talk show called BPO Talks, says there is a need to revisit education in the Philippines to incorporate the ever-changing dynamics in the contact centers.

At the same time, Uligan says there is now a need to study other key languages to ensure continued growth in the world market.

He says the types of calls the contact center agents receive now are vastly different from what it used to be more than a decade ago. “Twelve years ago we only handled basic calls, now our agents are answering more complex types, such as a client in the US asking how to fix their computers,” Uligan says.

In the maiden episode of the online show BPO Talks, Uligan says the requirements of customers are continuously growing, and there are now more requests from clients for agents to be proficient in other languages as well, apart from English. “Because our global customers are so satisfied with the way we handle things in the Philippines, they now ask us, can you do this in other languages?” Uligan says.

For the foreign vendors’ part, they also cite the need for greater efficiency through the use of the right technology. Slava Varlamov, the country manager for the Noda Interaction Platforms says, “we are present in other countries, but we realize the Philippines is number one in the world in the BPO contact center industry not only because of their good English, but because they care about the customers.”

Varlamov cites the need for higher efficiency, especially with the smaller and mid-sized contact centers due to the nature of the more complex-type of calls that contact center agents now deal with. “Technology can help. As requirements become more complicated, technology has to provide the agent a single user interface that presents data from several applications, not only for call management systems, but also for billing systems and others. Enabled by these powerful tools an agent can simultaneously handle not only voice calls, but fax’ requests, instant messaging (Skype), emails, and other sources of customer communication.”

The maiden episode of the online show BPO Talks will be shown in all the countries where Noda Interaction Platforms has a presence, primarily Philippines, Indonesia and countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. –MST Business