Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

As companies throughout the United States and the United Kingdom continued to look outside of domestic offerings for contact center operations, the opportunities in areas such as India, South Africa and the Philippines continue to grow. While India continues to dominate the global contact center industry, the Philippines is quickly becoming a strong competitor.


This growth in the Philippine area is helping to create a different trend – one that transforms these contact centers from cost centers to profit centers. This trend is in direct response to the customers’ continued efforts to outsource higher-value services, according to research completed by callcentres.net. 

At present, the Philippine contact center market has roughly 130,000 seats. Growth is expected to reach close to 25 percent over the next 12 months. The data from this research also indicates that further offshoring activities or migration of contact center jobs from the U.S.

"The Philippines has a larger proportion of profit centers," said William Dieu, senior research analyst for callcentres.net at the Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) conference. "There is a larger proportion of call centers here that have up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, and we expect that to increase in the next few years."

The transition from a cost center to a profit center is a strategic move for any contact center as it alleviates the burden of the cost of customer support and instead allows the contact center to have the opportunity to generate new sources of revenue and support its own operations.

For many contact centers, the transition from cost center to profit center is not any easy one and is not a move that should be done lightly. The requirements and activities of a profit sale can differ greatly from that of a cost center, one that is focused simply on inbound customer resolution and basic information provision.

A profit-based contact center can only be successful if its agents are trained and skilled enough to handle the sales portion of the call. These agents must be able to transition from an information-based call to one that is centered on completing a sale. This involves up-selling and cross-selling activities that not all contact center agents are qualified to handle.

Introducing sales into the contact center can spell new revenue sources for the organization and can turn the cost center into a profit center, if the transition is handled correctly. With a strategic focus that keeps the ultimate goal in mind, the profit center can maximize its potential in the market to offer a more attractive choice for investors.