On call

If you’re like me, you’ve come to anticipate a trip to Eastwood Cinemas with a strange mix of fascination and dread. This is because you know you’ll have to sit through — albeit very comfortably — a deeply annoying jingle that dances across the screen before the movie previews — you know, the one advertising the daily, mind-blowing wonders of Eastwood City Cyberpark:

Life is good, life’s a walk in the park Livin’ and workin’ in Eastwood Cyberpark…

The jingle does remind us, though, that thousands of Filipinos do base their livelihood on "reaching out to the global market" as call-center operators in Metro Manila. Around 30 US-based centers operate in Eastwood Cyberpark alone, and the Philippines stands to inherit a lot more of these service-oriented jobs in the future. Filipinos seem to have the right stuff: they possess solid English skills with easily adaptable accents. Want "American"? A few weeks’ training will have your operators speaking like Yankees in no time!

Filipinos are also very friendly, and this is a good quality to have when dealing with pissed-off foreigners over the phone. Not all callers to these outsourced service centers are pissed off, but some can get quite testy, as several operators I’ve spoken to can testify.

The call center phenomenon has been reported ad nauseam, so I won’t belabor its obvious points. Suffice to say the Philippines has about 60,000 jobs (compared to India’s 245,000, though the Philippines is gaining ground). If the country approaches its target of India’s number of jobs by 2010, this could mean an extra $1 billion in yearly revenues for the country. So that’s some good economic news.

I wanted to get a snapshot peek inside the average call center, so I interviewed a few former operators (the companies prefer the term "customer care agents") to find out what it’s really like working at such places. Not so bad, they say, once you get used to the strange backwards schedule that results from answering people’s daytime questions from halfway round the globe.

Workers drift into work around 10 or 11 p.m. (often after a wee bit of "partying" at the surrounding eateries and watering holes of Eastwood), settle into their headsets and start taking calls. The US companies located here hire operators to field customer questions about every service you can imagine — from how to use your credit card to how to buy a coffin over the Internet. (There is actually a company that does this.)

The funny thing is, most of these service jobs were supposed to stay in the US, replacing all the manufacturing jobs that started disappearing (or being outsourced to Asia and Mexico) in the 1990s. Now the US service jobs are migrating abroad, too, possibly because companies can’t resist paying foreigners a fraction of what they would pay Americans to handle irate customers over the phone. Caller salaries here vary from about P12,000 to P18,000 a month: pretty good pay for fresh graduates.

First, of course, there is intensive training. This can run anywhere from three to eight weeks, depending on the company. One of the more interesting things I heard about is "accent neutralization training." No company actually calls it that, but it’s a week or two spent teaching trainees how to tone down their Filipino accents, and adopt certain twangy, American lilts in their speech. The accent training goes on for about a week. There are morning (or evening) exercises, practice sessions on how to place the stress on certain syllables. Idioms are discussed, as in what Americans mean when they say "it’s raining cats and dogs," or "barking up the wrong tree," and how to avoid using words like "cop" or "cheap" (use "police" or "affordable" instead).

After the initial orientation, operators undergo "client-specific" training, wherein they become virtual experts on products and services that are completely brand-new to them. "If you don’t have the background in the business you’re learning about, you’re nervous," says one former trainee. "You get worried about irate customers."

Some people crack during the training. "The pressure built up," says one former trainee, who took several tests a week. "I couldn’t handle it anymore. I was taking it too seriously."

The trainees are told to breathe deeply and focus on the clients’ problem. "First, you’re trained to let them know you’re trying to help. You try and put yourself in their situation. They’re not receiving the best service, so they’re upset."

Often, very upset. Clients curse, they yell, they ask to talk to the supervisor. "When they react to you violently, normally you want to get back at them. But you’re trained how to respond."

Some just lose it, though. Asked if operators ever yell at the customers, one former employee admitted, "Sometimes."

"It’s really annoying when they can’t understand basic information," says one. "And some don’t understand that their questions are off the script."

Ah, yes: the script. When operators receive up to 80-100 calls per shift, at an average 90 seconds per call, sticking to a game plan is key. The Filipino operators learn a basic script for each product or service they’re providing, and to fall off the script is bad news. No time for idle chitchat, and certainly no time to talk about the weather.

In case the weather does come up, though, call center stations have a unique way of preparing their across-the-globe operators. There are weather programs with updated US weather conditions at operators’ stations. That way, if the chatty caller wants to know, "How’s the weather over there at your headquarters in (fill in name of American city)?" the operator can fudge an answer. "We can punch it up on our screens," says one.

Not to say that there’s a lot of willful deception among foreign-based call centers. Let’s just call it role-playing.

There’s a lot of preparation, and daily study of US current events, newspapers and maps. As one consultant who helps US companies set up call centers here says: "Remember, you need to ‘fool’ your Western callers into believing that they are speaking to someone from your own country when speaking to your Philippines call center agents. It’s kind of unsettling to know that the person giving you directions to the local Applebee’s has never set foot on American soil."

"Some callers will ask, ‘Where are you from?’ when they notice you have an accent," explains one female operator. Some companies don’t want the operators to say they’re from the Philippines, because this raises a lot of questions. Plus, the goal is to answer the caller’s question quickly and move on. To prevent this, Filipino operators are trained to say, "Well, our head offices are in (fill in name of American city)."

Some companies go one step further: they assign homogenized names to the Filipino operators. It’s become common to dole out simple, American-sounding names — like "Suzy Williams" — to operators here. Being Filipinos, many come up with their own invented "joke" names — bastos handles such as "Moe Lester" or "Buster Cherry." Of course, the operators are logged on under the assigned names, so it’s easy to track down which operator took which call if complaints come rolling in.

The logic behind the assigned names seems to be to keep clients close to the script. Using an operator’s real Filipino-sounding name leads to digressions, personal inquiries and basically lots of time-consuming chatter. So, for the sake of efficiency, "Suzy Williams" it is.

Most Filipinos take to the role-playing pretty well. Companies try to make a game of it, breaking training groups into teams, rewarding points to those who get the most American idioms correct, or those who know their US state capitals. Groups with the highest successful call rates win prizes.

But there’s another concern behind all this team building: security. Call center operators work under lots of pressure — some of it from the callers, and some of it from their bosses. "They watch every move you make," recalls one trainee. "You can’t use Microsoft Word, Friendster or Yahoo. You can’t surf." At one company, a "quality assurance" team is assigned to monitor the websites used by operators at their stations. "You can only use these on your free time."

Another operator described a great deal of monitoring — even of bathroom breaks. "Everything’s recorded," she said, including the phone calls.

"You can’t bring your own books or notebooks into your station," says the operator. "You can’t take notes. It’s very strict security."

This may seem a little "Big Brother"-ish, but when you consider that many of these operators are handling sensitive client information — including credit card numbers to book flights and place orders — then you begin to understand the high-security environment.

And far from being gulags, the foreign-run call centers treat locals pretty well. Job turnover averages about 2.5 years, which is higher than usual. Centers provide rows of computers just for surfing and gaming during employee breaks, or lounges with La-Z-Boy recliners so operators can catch up on their sleep. And there’s usually free coffee and iced tea.

So, are call centers the thing that will keep more Filipinos here at home instead of seeking jobs abroad? It’s hard to say. In some ways, Filipinos being trained to talk and "act" like Americans is nothing new. Many young Filipinos do just that when they live or study in the US. And certainly, spending hours on the phone is not exactly torture for young Filipinos. If Americans like the service they get from Filipino call center operators, then more jobs will come here. And who knows? Maybe some of this "good service" will rub off on other local businesses.