The call center industry in the Philippines, like in India, has provided a great boost to employment. It’s the sunshine industry for the Philippines providing tens of thousands of jobs yearly. Sadly, even as they provide jobs for multitudes of Filipinos, call centers in the Philippines are unbelievably notorious in violating labor laws in the country. Take for example the latest case of mass termination of employees from Western Wats in Mactan Cebu City. More...

A large number of call center employees are very fearful they may lose their livelihood in less than a month if their call center management does not do anything about their situation. A long time rumor has finally turned into reality, Telus call center which is one of the biggest call centers in the Philippines and formerly Ambergris solutions, will be losing all their Dell accounts by February 2008. My sources from inside Telus reveal that employees in their Dell accounts are becoming increasingly de-motivated as they see indications of the impeding demise of their account. More...

The popularity of Six Sigma in the BPO world has spread and reached the Philippines only recently. More and more contact centers are now embracing six sigma as a tool to provide more value in services they offer their clients. It is in no doubt the Philippine call centers are attempting to duplicate Indian BPO’s who have successfully used this methodology to improve their business. More...

The guillotine finally fell on the Epixtar call center last month as a local court has denied its petition for to continue operating in the Philippines through its proposed “rehabilitation plan”.  Epixtar was accused of falsifying sales figures in India in 2003. More...

I don’t know about how much Genpact supervisors and managers are getting in India, but in the Philippines they are the most highly paid in the industry. My snitch in Genpact Human Resources rang  me with the details of the salary package of their managers and I must say I was a bit surprised with how much they are getting paid to work and stay in Genpact! More...

Last month, Saffron Global Services, a Gurgaon-based BPO with a capacity of 1000 Agents held a lavish Diwali function.  The chief guest was Mr. Rastogi,  CEO of Tulip UK, the London based parent company of saffron (www.connectsaffron.com) and Maple (sister concern of Saffron based at Noida).  More...

Earlier in the year, techgoss had done news reports about how I-flex was struggling to keep employee morale high while implementing the ‘One call resolution setup’ for their USA-based client Option One Mortgage Corp.  The I-flex employees in Gurgaon were doing a fantastic job but the pressures of the complicated process lead to very high attrition (See story below). More...

According to the NE Support Centre, a manager of a New Delhi Call Centre made sexual advances to two young women from North East India, and then stopped their salary and suspended them from work when they resisted his overtures. The victims had complained to the NE Support Centre & Helpline. More...

By being a people-intensive and a high capital driven business, the IT-ITES Industry is always in need and in constant search for the best of the breed talent available in the market. The limited availability of qualified manpower added with the proliferation of a large number of IT Majors, has turned recruiting and head-hunting into a hectic activity these days.  A consequence has been sky-high salaries for fresh graduates. More...

The BPO Division of TCS is a smaller entity and seen as a neglected cousin within the entire TCS Fold, in comparison with the consulting and IT Services Domain. It has been operating out of three centers (Mumbai-Vikhroli, Chennai-Velachery and Bangalore-ITL Park) with its primary focus on Non-Voice Based Services. The TCS-BPO’s Voice Vertical  Team which accounts for less than 30% of the entire project port-folio got a shot in the arm when a major Home Furnishing Retailer based out of Austin decided to outsource its IT Helpdesk functions to it in July 2006. More...