BPO/CALL CENTER AGENT
BPOs, most notably known as call centers provide various services for all types of businesses. Names for call center agents include customer service representative (CSR), contact center agent, telephone sales or service representative (TSR), attendant, associate, operator, account executive, or team member. They gather data, set appointments, collect bad debt, promote products, handle customer service calls and chats as well as a host of other things, but their primary lure to business owners and operators is that they are relatively cheap compared to paying employees in the United States or other developed countries. Not only is the cost a factor but it is very difficult to get a lot of Americans to enter into that industry. Here, we would call those people, “Mafeeling.”
“Dialing for dollars”, another term used in the States for telemarketing is, well, in some circles, looked down upon. When people hear the word call center, they automatically picture a foreigner with a strong accent on the other end of the line either trying to sell them something or collect a payment. This is not fair to overseas call center workers but nonetheless, it is the reality. In addition to that negative image, Americans hate calling any customer care line because they are almost certain the person to whom they will be speaking with will be residing overseas.
Before call centers, salespeople had to make their own sales calls and since they hated doing it, it never got done. Then the explosion in the call center industry happened in the 1990s and most businesspeople who relied on the telephone jumped for joy thinking, “Great, we can send all of these calls overseas that nobody wants to make here and wash our hands with it.” Well, it didn’t take off that smoothly. Most Americans hated it and still do. I want to point out, it is not the English being spoken by a foreigner, bad grammar, or poor pronunciation that irritates most Westerners, it’s the heavy accent that makes it difficult for a lot of Westerners to understand. Most overseas workers are hired because they speak English very well and are well-educated. The only challenge is the heavy accent.
Overseas companies saved the call center industry similar to how the porn industry saved the internet. Most people don’t realize the internet was very slow to take off and had it not been for the porn industry, there may not have been a Google today. The same goes for overseas call centers. In the early years of the BPO industry, it was the overseas call centers’ agents who collected bad debt that saved the BPO industry. Now, just like the World Wide Web, the BPO industry is a multi-billion dollar industry.
I pointed out this fact about the accent for one reason and one reason only. Filipinos have the perfect call center agent accent. Filipinos sound warm, sweet, nice, approachable, and kind. Filipinos who speak well and work in the BPO industry are loved by all Westerners as well as all over the world. Filipinos should be dominating the BPO industry, but yet other countries in Asia still have a large portion of the market cornered. The challenge that I see is twofold. One, the industry hasn’t been aggressively targeted by Filipino entrepreneurs well enough, they must be more Makulit. Two, no one is training Filipinos properly so they can compete at the same level that tother Asian countries do. In short, others are playing chess and Filipinos are playing checkers. If you want to compete with the pros you have to become a professional.
Let’s start the lesson by illuminating the life of the average call center agent.
Working in a call center is a very stressful job for most people. This is the first time most new hires have been given quotas that they are expected to meet. Whether that quota is made up of number of calls to be made, to receive, chats to be engaged, products or services to be sold, appointments to be made, data or debt to be collected, and so forth. Basically, your butt has been put in the hot seat from the moment you sign the contract. By the way, employment agreements are written by the employer’s attorney, not yours. Which means the attorney works for the employer, not you. Which implies that the contract is there to protect the employer, not you.
If you get hired to work making international calls, chatting, or taking customer service calls, which is where the real money is, you will most likely be working night shift. Unlike the Philippines, the United States is very wide and covers four time zones, whereas the Philippines only has one. If you live in the Philippines, no matter where you are, your Kabayans are on the same time. On the other hand, if you live in New York and your friend lives in Los Angeles, you will have a three-hour difference in time. Why is this important? Because if you are going to work internationally, you must learn the time zones and adjust your schedule accordingly.
Six months of the year, the Philippines is 12 hours ahead of New York, 13 hours the other 6 months. The reason for the hour difference is something called daylight savings time which most Americans hate because we have to set our clocks back and forward one hour. This antiquated idea was to give farmers more daylight working hours, but today it is just a pain in the behind. So, when it is 9 am here in the Philippines, it is 9 am in New York, and 6 am in Los Angeles. This means there are about 15 to 16 hours a day that you may work in most cases unless you’re assigned to an account that has 24-hour customer service. Then again, if you’re good, your employer will want you on night shift which will be prime time in most cases.
Working night shift takes getting used to. Your body naturally wants to follow nature which means it wants to be awake during the day and sleep at night. Night shift isn’t for everyone. In fact, I only recommend it if you are eating healthy, exercising, getting 7 to 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night, and don’t have health issues. I also try to discourage parents with young families, because night shift takes away too much from their family time since the members of the family are on different schedules. This is another reason when I look for callers or assistants, I am always looking to see if they take good care of themselves and have no health issues because my team and I work night shift since my company is based in the States.
In addition, this is one thing that really scares me about the reputation call centers have. In the Philippines, people think of call center agents as these: wild partiers, drinking, smoking, doing drugs, tattooing each other, and sex maniacs riddled with aids. I don’t see how that is possible since most agents, at least the good ones would be working at night, and would have to be fresh the next evening to work again. I am sure there are those who do fit that stereotype but I would venture to guess it is a very small minority―or at least I hope so.
As a call center agent, you are a salesperson, like it or not, that is your job. You’re either selling products or services, or maybe even both. It is an honorable profession if you sell with honesty and integrity. I love the profession of professional sales as well as marketing so much that I have devoted an entire section to them on this website. I have studied these professions extensively and will be sharing with you the information needed to earn millions of dollars from a headset. I assure you it can happen. I have run my company from here in the Philippines for the past 20 years and the 3 skills I use most are my English, computer, and sales skills.
To work in the BPO industry, you need great English communication skills, some IT skills, professional sales skills, and a host of other personal development skills, including but not limited to, time management skills. All of which I will address at length on this site. It would be impossible for me to upload my 52 years of work and business experience on this site at one time and even if I could, it would be too much too soon. I am going to take you through the learning process one step at a time so the material does not overwhelm you. Laozi teaches us that, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” With that Chinese proverb as the guide, I will post new lessons, articles, and/or information for your consumption quite frequently, so come back to this site and look around for what’s new and keep honing your skills.
Be sure to visit, Land the Job of your Dreams, as well as the Sales and Marketing tabs to learn how to brand yourself, market yourself, and sell your service as an Agent in a professional way to get a better job and higher pay. Sometimes, all it takes is knowing what to say to get an increase in pay.