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Americans calling the customer service lines of their airlines, phone companies and banks are now more likely to speak to agents named Mark in Manila than people named Bharat in Bangalore.
Over the past several years, a quiet revolution has been reshaping the call center business: the rise of the Philippines, a former US colony that has a large population of young people who speak lightly accented English and, unlike many Indians, are steeped in US culture.
More Filipinos - about 400,000 - than Indians now spend their nights talking to mostly US consumers, according to industry officials, as companies like AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and Expedia have hired call centers here, or even built their own. The jobs have come from the US, Europe and, to some extent, India as outsourcers followed their clients to the Philippines.
India, where offshore call centers first took off in a big way, fields as many as 350,000 call center agents, according to some industry estimates. The Philippines, which has a population one-tenth as big as India's, overtook India this year, according to Jojo Uligan, executive director of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines.
The growing preference for the Philippines reflects in part the maturation of the outsourcing business and in part a preference for U.S. English. In the early days, the industry focused simply on finding and setting up shop in countries with large English-speaking populations and low labor costs, which mostly led them to India. But executives say they are now increasingly identifying places best suited for specific tasks. India remains the biggest destination by far for software outsourcing, for instance.
Executives say the growth was not motivated by wage considerations. Filipino call center agents typically earn more than their Indian counterparts ($300 a month, rather than $250, at the entry level), but executives say they are worth the extra cost because US customers find them easier to understand than they do Indian agents, who speak British-style English and use unfamiliar idioms.
Indians, for example, might say, "I will revert on the same," rather than, "I will follow up on that."
It helps that Filipinos learn US English in the first grade, eat hamburgers, follow the NBA and watch the TV show " Friends" long before they enter a call center. In India, by contrast, public schools introduce British English in the third grade, only the urban elite eat US fast food, cricket is the national pastime and "Friends" is a teaching aid for Indian call center trainers. English is an official language in both countries.
The Philippines has "a unique combination of Eastern, attentive hospitality and attitude of care and compassion mixed with what I call Americanization," said Aparup Sengupta, chief executive of Aegis Global, an outsourcing firm based in Mumbai, India, that acquired Manila-based People Support in 2008 and now employs nearly 13,000 Filipinos. "People are going in flocks to the Philippines."
US companies are reluctant to discuss their outsourcing strategies, but privately some executives acknowledged that early on, they focused primarily on saving money. But as they gained experience in different countries, they realized that was not the best strategy.
"Certain phrases people use and idioms are important," said an executive at a large U.S. company that handles service calls through the Philippines. He spoke on the condition that he and his firm not be identified. "We are getting better at it, but of course it is still a hot button."
Analysts said call centers in the Philippines appear to have helped US businesses respond to complaints from consumers who say they cannot understand Indian agents. But it is unlikely to satisfy critics who say outsourcing is sending too many jobs abroad as millions of Americans struggle to find work.
