A call centre or call center is a managed capability that can be centralised or remote that is used for receiving or transmitting a large volume of enquiries by telephone. An inbound call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product or service support or information inquiries from consumers. Outbound call centres are usually operated for sales purposes such as telemarketing, for solicitation of charitable or political donations, debt collection, market research, emergency notifications, and urgent/critical needs blood banks. A contact centre is a further extension of call centres telephony based capabilities, administers centralised handling of individual communications, including letters, faxes, live support software, social media, instant message, and email.
The economy of the Philippines is an emerging market, and considered as a newly industrialized country in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2023, the Philippine economy is estimated to be at ₱25.27 trillion, making it the world's 34th largest by nominal GDP and 14th largest in Asia according to the International Monetary Fund.
Telemarketing is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products, subscriptions or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call. Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches programmed to be played over the phone via automatic dialing.
Outsourcing includes both foreign and domestic forms of outside contracting. It is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another. The term outsourcing, which came from the phrase outside resourcing, originated no later than 1981 at a time when industrial jobs in the United States were being moved overseas, contributing to the economic and cultural collapse of small, industrial towns.
Convergys Corporation was a corporation based in Cincinnati, Ohio, that sold customer management and information management products, primarily to large corporations. Customer management products included agent assisted, self-service and care software tailored to the communications, financial services, technology, retail, healthcare and government markets. Information management provided convergent billing and business support system (BSS) products and services including revenue management, product and order management, and customer care management to telecom, utilities, and cable/satellite/broadband service providers. They had approximately 130,000 employees across 33 countries.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is a subset of outsourcing that involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of a specific business process to a third-party service provider. Originally, this was associated with manufacturing firms, such as Coca-Cola that outsourced large segments of its supply chain.
Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) describes the outsourcing of core information-related business activities which are competitively important or form an integral part of a company's value chain. KPO requires advanced analytical and technical skills as well as a high degree of specialist expertise.
One of the most dynamic and fastest growing sectors in the Philippines is the information technology–business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry. The industry is composed of eight sub-sectors, namely, knowledge process outsourcing and back offices, animation, call centers, software development, game development, engineering design, and medical transcription. The IT-BPO industry plays a major role in the country's growth and development.
Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) is a term often used to refer to Filipino migrant workers, people with Filipino citizenship who reside in another country for a limited period of employment. The number of these workers was roughly 1.77 million between April and September 2020. Of these, female workers comprised a larger portion, making up 59.6 percent, or 1.06 million. However, this number declined to 405.62 thousand between 2019 and 2020.
Dalian Software Park, also called DLSP, is an industrial zone, created in 1998 in the western suburbs of Dalian City, Liaoning Province, China, where many of the world's large and medium-sized IT-related companies have set up shop to do software development and information services. It is part of Dalian Hi-tech Zone in the broader sense. While American and European companies typically have gone to Bangalore and other cities in India because of the English language capability, Japanese companies have gone to Dalian and other cities in China due to the Japanese language capability.
Advanced Contact Solutions, Inc. (ACS) is a business process outsourcing (BPO) company based in the Philippines.
The Philippine Cyberservices Corridor is a plan that is being pursued by the government of the Philippines to create interconnected centers of technology-related services, that are spread out all over the country. Services include business process outsourcing, medical transcription, outsourcing of animation, and the like. It is part of the ten-point agenda of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and is one of the five "super-regions" outlined in her 2006 State of the Nation Address.
eTelecare Global Solutions, Inc (PSE:ETEL), was a provider of complex business process outsourcing (BPO).
The labor migration policy of the Philippine government allows and encourages emigration. The Department of Foreign Affairs, which is one of the government's arms of emigration, grants Filipinos passports that allow entry to foreign countries. In 1952, the Philippine government formed the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) as the agency responsible for opening the benefits of the overseas employment program. In 1995, it enacted the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Act in order to "institute the policies of overseas employment and establish a higher standard of protection and promotion of the welfare of migrant workers and their families and overseas Filipinos in distress." In 2022, the Department of Migrant Workers was formed, incorporating the POEA with its functions and mandate becoming the backbone of the new executive department.
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration was an agency of the government of the Philippines responsible for opening the benefits of the overseas employment program of the Philippines. It is the main government agency assigned to monitor and supervise overseas recruitment and manning agencies in the Philippines. The POEA's office is located at EDSA corner Ortigas Avenue, Mandaluyong, Philippines.
Focus Services LLC is a privately owned call center service provider, specializing in multi-product telesales and customer relationship management founded in 1995. It has locations in the United States, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Philippines.
Acquire Business Process Outsourcing is an Australian based global business process outsourcing firm that specializes in back office support, customer acquisition, customer service, technical support, lead generation and software development.
Enshored is an outsourcing company founded in 2014 which provides outsourcing services such as customer service, sales support, back office, and content moderation. Its headquarters are located in Long Beach, California and it operates from three locations in the Philippines as well as from Lisbon, Portugal. Enshored works with start-ups and scale-ups in disruptive industries.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the national and local governments of the Philippines have coordinated numerous international and domestic evacuations.
The Department of Migrant Workers is the executive department of the Philippine government responsible for the protection of the rights and promote the welfare of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) and their families. The department was created under the Department of Migrant Workers Act that was signed by President Rodrigo Duterte on December 30, 2021. The functions and mandate of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) will serve as the backbone of the department and absorbing the seven offices of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) namely the Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers' Affairs (OUMWA) of the DFA, Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO), International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB), National Reintegration Center for OFWs (NRCO) and the National Maritime Polytechnic (NMP) of the DOLE. The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration will serve as its attached agency and the DMW secretary will serve as the concurrent chairperson of OWWA.
