Excellent communication skills and a sense of service are what businesses look for before deciding to entrust their voice services to a call center, and the Philippines is an ideal outsourcing destination for having a workforce that possesses those exact traits.
The low wage and utility costs further catapult the country to its current outstanding position in the global outsourcing scene, but did you know that other progressive sectors are helping drive the growth of the Philippine business process outsourcing (BPO) industry? These sectors—tourism, information technology, and healthcare—are continuously luring foreign investors who eventually seek additional business deals with locally based call center firms.
Tourism
Despite the consecutive calamities that the region experienced, Central Visayas remains as the top Philippine tourist destination. In fact, the Department of Tourism (DOT) reported that 1.72 million foreign tourists visited the region in the first six months of 2013, a rate that is roughly 14.8% higher than 2012’s 1.5 million.
The aviation authority also reported that the 5,684 international flights that landed in Visayas last year surpassed the 2012 record by 18.2%. What followed the influx of tourists are construction activities for them to be accommodated. During the first three quarters of 2013, about 8,379 land development projects were approved, which were valued overall at P12.2 billion ($272 million).
The hospitality and travel business has been obviously benefiting from the region’s bankability, and it is seeking help from call centers in the Philippines to serve their guests better. They are partnering with outsourcing firms that would carry out reservation, booking, and ticketing services to their customers.
Information technology
The Philippine IT-BPO sector remains to be one of the biggest drivers of the country’s economic growth, particularly in regions that are groomed to be the newest IT centers. As proof, Central Visayas earned P435.4 million ($10 billion) in IT-BPO taxes from the first to third quarters of 2013. In addition, a Silicon Valley-type technopark is set to be finished this year in Laguna, promising jobs to 65% of the 2.7 million residents of the province.
This endeavor is part of the effort to elevate the job-generating capability of the call center outsourcing sector in 2014.
Healthcare
Last year, the global healthcare IT outsourcing industry earned $35 billion in revenue, and the rate is expected to reach $50.4 billion by 2018. The health information management (HIM) sector is, in fact, a rapidly growing sector of the Philippine BPO industry, which is set to be worth $1 billion by 2016.
Western health service providers are propelled to send billing and medical transcription jobs to call centers in the Philippines because of the pressure to reduce costs and meet government standards. The Philippines emerged as an ideal destination for health-related voice services, as it hikes along Asia’s medical tourism trend.
To summarize, the forthcoming success of the Philippine BPO sector will be a reflection of the growth in the tourism, information technology, and healthcare industries, whose foreign clients are also customers of the call centers these businesses partner with to accomodate thier growing clientele.