The Philippines ranks as the world’s second largest and leading offshore outsourcing destination for English-speaking tech support services. Not too long ago, almost all tech support-related work was offshore outsourced, almost entirely in India. Nowadays, an ever-increasing number of companies have been shifting their work to the Philippines. Key drivers for this phenomena are the country’s close cultural affinity to the West, the large labor pool of highly educated and skilled IT and computer science graduates as well as the excellent “American English” language proficiency. In the year 2000, the Philippines was home to less than 10 BPO providers, only four of which were providing tech support services. Today, the Philippines has more than 200 companies that specialize in providing technical support services to companies in the US, UK and Australia. The level of tech support provided by Philippine-based call center service providers varies from company to company. Most tech support providers in the Philippines specialize in providing level 1 & 2 support services. Level 3 tech support services are often escalated or routed back to the client location.
Tech support outsourcing to the Philippines is expected to grow at double-digit rates over the next three to five years. The fairly low cost and high quality of service have been the main growth drivers for the tech support industry in the Philippines. Tech support services in the Philippines are provided both via voice and data (e.g. web chat) whereas the large majority of it is handled on the voice side. Rates for tech services in the Philippines are about 40-60% cheaper than standard US rates.
The good news for foreign based SMEs is that over the last few years, more than 100 small-to-medium sized call center started operating and are specializing in providing tech support services in the Philippines. The advantages for companies outsourcing their technical support requirements to medium-sized tech support firms in the country are as follows:
Program Size
Large tech support providers such as TeleTech or Convergys usually do not consider tech support outsourcing engagements that are smaller than 50 FTEs. The outsourcing requirements of SMEs are, however, in the very large majority of cases significantly smaller (five to 50 tech support agents).
Account Management
Companies with only minimal tech support outsourcing requirements are often better advised to outsource to medium- sized call center service providers since the account management of medium-sized players is, in most cases, significantly better.
Service Quality
Alongside a focused and dedicated account management approach, medium-sized service providers often also deliver significantly higher service quality with regards to providing technical support services for SMEs.
Cost
Let’s face it. Cost is one of the driving factors that bring the business offshore. Medium-sized tech support service providers usually charge 10-30% less than their large-sized counter parts.