Friday, October 23, 2009 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES [ BusinessWorld Online ]
US-BASED Convergys Corp. is bent on further expanding in the country next year due to growing demand from its clientele, after opening its biggest call center in Makati.
Convergys Senior Vice-President for Human Resources Clark D. Handy said in a press conference at the formal opening of the call center firm’s new site in Glorietta 5 yesterday that demand for more sites in the Philippines continues to grow due to Filipinos’ quality of work as well as affinity with Western culture.
"Clients choose the Philippines because of their skills. The Filipino work ethic is so strong," he said.
He noted that Convergys received positive feedback from clients based on a client satisfaction survey conducted this year. The survey he said, allowed clients to evaluate services provided by agents by giving a 1 to 5 rating, with 1 being the lowest and 5 as the top score.
Convergys Vice-President and Country Manager for the Philippines Marife Zamora said that for this year, the firm got an average grade of 4.02.
"For this year, we were targeting to get 4.0," she said.
She said the firm is looking at opening new sites next year due to the increasing demand from mostly US clients, as well as new clients from the United Kingdom and Australia.
Amid the global downturn, the firm opened contact centers at Cebu Asiatown i3 in Cebu City, the Technohub of the University of the Philippines and Ayala Land, Inc. in Quezon City, and the Nuvali TechnoHub in Sta. Rosa, Laguna in April.
"Due to the demand of clients, we will be adding another floor, which translates to 300 seats at the Technohub in Quezon City this year, and an additional 300 seats in another site at the former San Lazaro racetrack in Manila which will be opened in January of next year," she said.
The Quezon City site has 420 seats, while the San Lazaro site has 460 seats, equivalent to around 2,000 jobs.
Mr. Handy said that while the Philippines was struck by tropical storm Ondoy last month, the firm’s services were not affected as its sites had multiple back-up systems to ensure that operations would continue.
"If there were problems, all we had to do was switch the calls to another site," he said.
Ms. Zamora said that for this year, the firm wants to expand its work force to 20,000.
"Our target this year is to have 20,000 employees and we think we can go beyond that with the opening of the Glorietta 5 site," she said.
The site in Glorietta 5, which is the largest Convergys contact center in the world, has 2,041 seats. Some 3,500 jobs were created.
Convergys has 12 sites in Metro Manila, Cebu, Bacolod, and Sta. Rosa, Laguna, with around 17,500 employees before yesterday’s opening of the Glorietta 5 facility. — Louella D. Desiderio
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