Since its boom in 2000, the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, has become the fastest growing industry in the Philippines. There are currently 160,000 agent seats in the call center sub-sector or 67% of the more than 200,000 total workers employed in the BPO industry according to the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP).

Since its boom in 2000, the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, has become the fastest growing industry in the Philippines. There are currently 160,000 agent seats in the call center sub-sector or 67% of the more than 200,000 total workers employed in the BPO industry according to the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP).

The government is peddling this type of employment as the solution to the systemic unemployment in the country. So much so that it is gearing even the university and college curricula in churning up call center agents that will be part of the labor pool of the BPO industry – where clients, customers, workers, irrespective of their time zones, compete under the most exploitative and oppressive manipulations, calculations and maneuvering of multinational corporations. It is business 24/7.

Transnational corporations (TNCs) do not outsource their business to developing countries out of charity or because of a particular concern to provide employment to these poorer countries. Although the allure of a better-trained workforce is one of the factors that drive US TNCs to outsource their services abroad, cheaper labor costs are undoubtedly more decisive. Filipino workers’ salaries are a fraction of those paid to US workers. A call center agent in the Philippines can earn an average of PhP 12,000 – 15,000 monthly, the American counterpart would make $ 12,000 a year or an average of PhP 50,000 a month, e.g. for one American agent they can hire three Filipino agents. And these Filipino workers enjoy less benefits than their American counterparts.

The sector is not unionized. The issues at stake are many: the industry touts of high wages, but this is not true, the basic wage is low compared to the level of skilling and workload. An industrial skilled unionized worker can earn more. In call centers ‘flexible pay’ and bonuses are big sellers.

The key word for the workers is flexibility. Flexible working time and relations are what best described the BPO industry. Agents work in graveyard shifts. Work stresses are high as agents have to deal with unsociable hours and demanding customers. The health risks are many - exposure to computer screens, sleep deprivation, and muscle pain due to immobility.

There is no regulation for different time zone workers. Especially for female workers, having to report in the middle of the night, traveling at times when there are less people on the streets and no public transport available, they usually travel by taxi for security reasons. There is no compensation for this extra travel expense.

Organizing this sector will require skills different from the standard labor organizer. High flexibility of working hours/working conditions, high turn over of workers are not very favorable conditions for organizing work. Another feature of this industry is quick up-mobility: you can fast make a career, become supervisor, trainer, MC, etc. The good thing is there is a trend towards regularization.

The culture of call center agents is that of the yuppies. Their self-perception is that they belong to higher paid and higher skilled echelon of the workers. Yet working in a call center is not considered as a career. It is used as a stepping stone for higher paid jobs, either abroad or up to the managerial level. To be an agent is a transient type of work. This is also one reason for a high turnover in the sector.

The application

It is not difficult to find application sites for call centers. The newspapers are full of ads with recruitment centers. Every mall in NCR has a call center or a recruitment office.

The majority of the applicants are young people, between 20-25 years of age, fresh graduates from colleges and universities. A considerable number are working students, who work in order to pay for their studies. The majority are female workers.
The process of application usually takes place in a day and the result is released in the same day.

The first step is a group discussion of six to eight people. Here, a first screening takes place based on accent, pronunciation, and mastery of the English language, as well as previous work experiences. The second step is an exam on English grammar, IQ, computer navigation, listening skills, typing speed, etc. When you fail in one of these steps, it is the end of the story.

When I passed all these tests, a final interview was done. I was then informed that I was eligible for the job. After which, I move on to the medical exam.

My first application was with a company which have a recruitment center at Edsa Central Pavilion. I passed all the tests and exams as well as the final interview, only to be told that they had yet no account – meaning to say there’s no work. They would call me (really a call center!). After some months they called indeed, informing me that they had a job placement for me and I started training as an agent. My starting salary was PhP 12,000.- a month.

The training

I started a two-week training, paid (80% of the salary). The first week concentrated on American accent training as well as US geography, history, and culture. The second week was product training, mainly order taking. I learned all the items on the order screen, to navigate the system and to follow call flow and scripting.

The training was from Mondays till Fridays 9:00 pm- 6:00 am with one hour lunch break. The training was done in a class, we were with 26 trainees in the class.
At the end of our product training we could listen in with agents on the floor during live- calls. We all graduated from the training and were sent to the floor.

Training is an integral part of the work in a call center. One frequently changes from one account to another and go through product-training. The duration of the training depends on the account.

Call centers usually demand that the applicant sign a bond before entering training, pledging that you will stay with the company for at least six months. When you resign during this period, you will have to pay the difference. This is not always the case with some companies.

On the floor

Such a floor consists of hundreds of cubicles, each with a computer, telephone plunger and headset. This is the working station.

The first week on the floor is terrible, since I was not yet exposed to live-calls and after some days, I wanted already to resign.

When we hit production, it was peak season, for the Christmas sales - 30,000 calls a week. If an agent can handle 60 plus calls per 8 hours, one can calculate how many agents the company needs. We did mainly order taking for the Christmas sales. But we also have to do soft selling; for each extra item sold, a commission is earned. This can amount to more than the monthly basic salary.

Because it was peak time, we were asked to do two hours overtime. After 8 hours of intense work, I already felt the heavy load. Our work schedule differed from week to week, as well as the day off. Hardly were there two days off in a row.

My work time was usually from 4:00 am- 1:00 pm. Sometimes I had to start at 2:00 am. Sometimes at 6:00 am. The week's schedule was only posted on Fridays. I cannot schedule any personal assignments, since I don’t know my schedule in advance and the days off are not fixed. The workweek starts on Sunday to Saturday, a 5-day working week.

Night differential is paid at 20 % during 10:00 pm- 6:00 am. There is no guarantee that work will be for 8 hours at 5 days a week. During peak season, there is no problem; there is even pressure to do overtime. But during off-peak season, the days are cut; sometimes I worked only 2 or 3 days a week and paid only for the days worked.

It is all about flexibility! The breaks are not fixed. When there are low calls, you can have an early break or lunch. When there are high calls, you are not allowed to have a break or lunch. Sometimes, after three hours, you have to remind the supervisor about the first break that you badly need by then!

On the floor, Mission Control (MC) determines when you can go on break, have lunch or log off. They control the calls and the agents on avail. The supervisor has to ask the permission from MC to send agents on break, lunch, or log off.

You have to complete 8 hours staffed time, i.e., the hours that your are logged-in and ready to receive calls. In practice, it means that you ’re much longer on the floor. You need to be at your workstation 15 minutes before, in order to prepare for your on-line tools, pull up the account screen and prepare for log-in.

Sometimes there is a system down, or the telephone connection is cut. These losses are registered as exception minutes(hours). When the telephone line is down, the live-line of the call center is cut, you cannot do anything anymore. However when the Internet connection is down, you can still receive calls and process the call manually; to later on encode again in the computer(usually during your breaktime).

You inform customers about a system error, then they normally will hang up and call back, since manual processing takes much longer.

Every account is different, and procedures may vary from account to account. After several weeks, just a week before Christmas, we experienced our first downsizing. Half of the agents were transferred to another account.

At the end of January – off-season – we had our second downsizing; we were left with 24 agents. I could continue with the same account, but got additional training for customer service.

A few month later our account was closed, much to everybody’s surprise. You are not informed about the reason. We were transferred to another account. The computer controls everything of your work; important is your average handling time for a call(AHT); the average handling time in my first account was 5 minutes and 30 seconds.

You have 30 seconds to disposition your call; i.e. you have 30 seconds between each call. When you exceed these limits, MC will warn you and it will affect your AHT. Your calls are recorded and QA(Quality assurance) listens in. Every day you receive a printout of QA with your score of that particular call and areas for improvement. You have to sign these reports. Important for QA is the call flow.

Based on your score your commission is computed. Needless to say that this usually lowers your commission depending on your performance.

Customers have the right to speak to a supervisor; if this is the case, it is considered an escalated call. The reason customers ask to speak with a supervisor is, they do not understand the agent, they do not trust/believe the agent, or they do not get satisfactory answers, they want to lodge an complain about an agent. The agent is down-marked for this.

To be absent is a mortal sin in a call center. Call centers pay a bonus for 100% attendance per month. In my company, this is P 3,000.00 per month tax-free. in contrast to your commission that is still taxed.

When typhoon strikes, everything is done to have you report to work. You can report to work several hours before your schedule; these hours are paid as overtime, but you need not log-in before your actual schedule. You just report to your supervisor!

The new account was much heavier than my first account. There was a 4-week product training, and two-week learning laboratory (you receive live-call, but still in a learning setting). It needed much more navigating on online tools. The product was much more complicated and the average handling time was 6 minutes per call. There was no dispositioning between the calls; you had only 10 seconds for the next call. It was exclusively customers’ service, i.e. solving problems of customers who call in.

An integral part of your work as an agent is multi-tasking, i.e. to do several operations at the same time: listening to the customer, navigating the system, annotating the account. You have to do everything yourself (not like in a factory, once the machine is set, it runs, you just have to watch, adjust). So your 8 hours staffed time are indeed 8 full hours of work.

The QA was more stringent. There is the in-house QA, there is the QA in the US. QA monitors especially the call flow; when you fail in the proper flow, this is auto-fail; you forget to sell, you get a penalty score. You forget to thank the customer, that is autofail. All these scores affect your commission, positively or negatively. When you maintain the proper call flow, you get automatically a score of 80 (out of 100), getting additional scores (minus or plus) will affect your overall score and your commission.

When you do not resolve the issue of a customer and your call is monitored then, you will get an IR (Incident Report). Several of these reports might lead to termination. A third party surveys customers after your call and you will get a rating 1-5. If your score is below 4, you fail in customers’ satisfaction. Again several of such negative reports and you are out of your job.

Another control level is: you work as a team; as a team you are set to certain scores; when you fail in your scores, it will automatically affect the overall score of your team. You can imagine how such a social control works! If one teammate absent, everybody has to make up for the lost staffed hours.

A team consists of ± 15 agents under one supervisor. On one floor there are several teams. Between these teams there is competition for the best scores. You get a bonus for teambuilding (an outing). My last account was divided over several floors.

Also between the floors there is competition. This is all possible because the score are immediately available through the computer!

I had to render two hours overtime everyday in this account. If you work less than 8 hours staffed time, your attendance bonus will be lost. You cannot make up for this by doing overtime the next day.

When you want to be absent, you must file a leave of absence in advance. This leave is added to your day off, i.e. you will automatically loose your attendance bonus (P 3,000.-), when you don’t have vacation leave. In such a way the company manipulates with your days off.

The company has policy of regularization after six months. You are entitled to sick leave (15 days) and vacation leave (15 days) after one-year service.
There is a shuttle service in the evening and night from EDSA Crossing to Ortigas Center. There are some medical provisions in the building, e.g. a clinic with a company nurse. Once a year there is a medical check-up for the regular workers.
All call centers have the only English policy, i.e. being on the premises you must speak English, Filipino is prohibited. It depends on each call center how this is implemented. But being caught, you get an IR.

The work atmosphere is very American; in the canteens and smoking areas are TV screens showing American movies. Everywhere is the American time zone. Highlighted are American events and seasons (e.g. Halloween). Of course English is pervasive.

Thank you, Ma'am

Based on my work experience I have come to the conclusion that working in a call center is almost next to a modern form of slavery. Everything is dictated ‘from abroad’. Your working time is dictated by another time zone. The ‘clients’ dictate your language. Your work is attending to foreign (American) customers, who want everything instant and at the click of the mouse. Racist expressions, like “are you an Indian”, “can I speak to someone who speaks better English”, being shouted at and other verbal abuses are the normal load of a call center agent in the Philippines. One customer declined to give her credit card number when she learnt that the call center was located in the Philippines.

You have all to patiently listen to this and you may not hang up on a customer, and must remain friendly. This plastic life for the sake of ‘sales’, ‘customers’ satisfaction’ is an utterly form of suppression. There have been instances that agents send e-mails to customers about their anger or even called them back. Of course they were terminated at once!

“Customers’ satisfaction” is the slogan and it is a different name for profit.