Where is the Competent English-speaking Juan dela Cruz?
By Roy Jonathan del Rosario
It is proven right? That Filipinos are better than any other Asian nations in terms of fluency in the American language and adeptness with the western way of life. And with the literacy rate of 94 percent, it would probably build up such expectations from the transnational companies that might be hard to meet.
Recent reports dealing with the lack of competent Filipino call center agents have been prevalent nowadays particularly in the urban area like the Metro where there are a great number of English-speakers.
The demand for qualified call center agents doesn’t meet the necessity for it. This might be an acceptable reason why Philippines lack competent agents since there is a great inflation of offshore outsourcing companies that may be the root of shortness of agents since the supply of great number of contact center agents are being outnumbered by the escalating number of incoming transnational outsourcing companies.
Due to this, many outsourcing companies were opened in provinces such as Cebu and some parts of Mindanao which produce competent agents as well since there is a need for more of contact center agents that the Metro can’t supply.
The lack of eligible contact center staff has driven the operators in the Philippines to opt in offering employing bonuses and to poaching contact center workers from their rival outsourcing companies. Some huge contact center operators have started to offer employing bonuses of US$92 or 5,000 Philippine pesos or better to the competent applicants if the applicants have had some constant training before or an experience in other contact centers.
So it is evident that the quality of English proficiency of Filipinos is not deteriorating, rather, just being outnumbered by the continuous penetration of transnational outsourcing companies. In light of this, it is a wake up call to Filipinos to increase and improve the education system especially the English course to increase the outcome of competent English-speakers from the universities.
