http://www.philstar.com/business/2014/04/07/1309878/accent-matters-philippines-acquiring-70-india-call-centers
India is losing 70% of all incremental domestic business process outsourcing (BPO) businesses, particularly call centers, estimated to be worth $30 billion in foreign exchange earnings. Most of this business is moving to the Philippines as Filipinos have a more neutral English Accent. The Philippines also has a large amount well educated and English Speaking Graduates. Only 10% of Indian Graduates are employable as 30% of Filipino Graduates are employable. Revenue was up 17% as these companies were doing better in the Philippines. The reason for this is because customers prefer talking to someone who easily speaks English with a neutral accent. If all goes right 4.5 Million Filipinos could be employed by 2016.
The idea of calling a call center in India sounded interesting to me as this is something I've had to deal with. Many people all over the world have an accent. Sometimes it's easy to understand as it can also be hard to understand. Regardless if we have an accent or not we all have to communicate with each other somehow.
I found it interesting that the Philippines actually has English Speakers with an accent easy to understand. It makes me wonder why we have call centers in India in the 1st place. If we would have known this fact about the Philippines would we have not outsourced our businesses to India in the 1st place knowing we could avoid a call that is impossible to understand? I find also interesting that the Philippines is in Asia. When you think of Asia you don't usually think of English.
I definitely agree with all of this. I think this business move is a very smart idea. Last semester I had a problem with my Dell Computer and had to call customer support for help. It was a rough 2 hours on the phone as I could barely understand their accents. I almost wanted to scream. In the end they thanked me for my patience. Perhaps if were calling the Philippines last semester I wouldn't have been so stressed out with the call.
I'd be more curious to see how this all plays out. Would this hurt India in anyway? Would the Philippines gain strength?
India's Economy would no doubt take a beating. It doesn't help that they have a population of over 1 billion people. What is India going to look like in the next 10 years? Of course the Philippine Economy will be stronger. Are other economies going to be affected by this? If businesses want to use people easy to understand what happens to other people with hard accents to understand? Are these people also going to lose their job to someone who is easy to understand? In the next 20 years will our world look different as we want to understand people as they speak in neutral accents?
No comments:
Post a Comment