Many enterprising Australian companies have a new business partner from the Philippines.  It’s the outbound call centre based in the Philippines.  The outbound call centre, most often used for lead generation or telesales, is one of the most popular services that Australian companies outsource to the Philippines.

Australian companies outsource their outbound call centre processes to the Philippines because not only do they get a tremendous cost savings thereby freeing up money for reallocation to other areas of the budget but they also get much greater efficiency because these companies are set up specifically to do these outbound call centre tasks.

More often than not, these outbound call centres in the Philippines have a higher level of technology invested in their processes.  Whereas the client company might just invest ‘just enough’ money to get the job down, the outbound call centre services companies in the Philippines are set up to do this one thing only … and nothing else.  Therefore it makes sense that they often have better software, technology and facility design invested in their task.

And that’s not to mention the difference in cost between setting up outbound call centres onshore and in-house vs. offshore.  Operational costs in Australia are based on typical ‘western economy’ prices.

This price differential applies to labor especially. Labor costs in the Philippines are much lower.  That factor, combined with the fact that these Philippines outbound call centres are also designed specifically to be ‘outbound call centres,’ means that they’re very efficient operations and that Australian clients can save 30-60% over the cost of comparable operation in-house and onshore.

Filipino outbound call centre operators approach their jobs with enthusiasm and dedication and they bring an attitude of service that’s not always present in Western cultures.  Filipinos are renowned for their patience, courtesy and very neutral English accent.

Australian client companies also enjoy the fact that by outsourcing offshore to the Philippines they don’t have to get involved in the day-to-day management headaches of running an outbound call centre.  They have only to establish goals and monitor the results.  That frees their collective minds for other, more creative tasks within the marketing mix.

The outbound call centre is a very powerful tool in the hands of companies in Australia who know how to use it.  As more Australian companies discover that the wages in Philippines are 30-60% of what they are in Australia, they realize that they can get a lot of work done for very little money by setting up an outbound call centre in the Philippines.

Probably the most common use for an outbound call centre is to help the company generate leads and/or increase sales.  Since so much of the business and buying process takes place over the phone nowadays anyway, companies realize that outsourcing their outbound call centre offshore is just another form of delegation.

The Philippines is a natural place to establish their outbound call centre too because it’s commonly recognized as the call centre capital of the world.  In the nation’s capital, Manila, the driving force behind the economy is the BPO, Call Centre, IT industry.  They flock to Manila to establish an outbound call centre because of its excellent labor market full of enthusiastic and capable young Filipinos looking for good jobs.

Outbound call centre work can be about lead generation, outbound telesales, survey taking, customer win-back, data cleansing, contribution solicitations are a variety of other processes.  Anything that’s done on the phone and initiated by the company is categorized as ‘outbound.’

Outbound call centres come in all different sizes but the large well established companies operate very large centres that sometimes house many hundreds of outbound call centre agents working simultaneously.  Working in these kinds of jobs offers a very solid opportunity to progress through management, learn the industry, earn excellent salary and benefits and enjoy being in a leading edge industry.

These outbound call centre agents are usually college graduates and slightly more than half of them are women.  But men have an excellent opportunity too.  Most outbound call centre companies pay referral bonuses to their existing agents who refer experienced agents to their company.  The labor market for experienced outbound call centre agents is very competitive and that makes this industry one of the bright spots for young college graduates in the country.

Most companies like the idea of outsourcing as much of their workload as they can and recently many Australian companies have jumped on the outbound call centre bandwagon.  They’ve discovered that they can get the same work done for 30-60% of the price that they pay to have it done in Australia.  The money saved is money that they can divert to other important aspects of their business.

When the arithmetic is considered, the savings in dollars is rather large.  Most companies who use call centres, whether an outbound call centre or an inbound call centre, employ at least 10 agents.  The cost of those agents, in total, can add up to many thousands of dollars.  This is money that Australian companies can divert into local publicity, hiring more local salespeople or give back to stockholders as dividends.

The outbound call centre process can be useful for a variety of purposes.  Outbound telesales is the most obviously profitable use for call centre agents.  It depends on the specific product or service being sold of course but outbound sales centres have been used to sell some very expensive and complex products and services.  It all depends of how the outbound sales process is set up.

The outbound call centre can also be very effectively used for lead generation, fund raising, public relations, public services announcements, customer win-back and customer surveys.  One especially interesting point about outbound call centres is that they are proactive…i.e. the client company can choose when and how to engage them (set-up costs notwithstanding of course).

The outbound call centre can be used to test new products and promotions too.  If the particular script used doesn’t seem to ‘pull’ the way the client company wants it too, they can come up with a new script and try something else.  They can do it again and again until they find something that works well.  When they do, they can roll that out in a more expansive program specifically intended to generate sales.

Australian companies who use the outbound call centre to help in their business building find that it’s a very good value and relieves them of the associated hassle involved with running programs of this kind.  They can then devote more attention and resources to the things within their company they like doing the most…like product design, local promotion, etc.

The Philippines based Aussie outbound call centre connection is an important tool for Aussie businesses fighting to remain competitive in the tightening global economy.  Outsourcing their outbound call centre process to the Philippines not only saves Australian companies lots of money but it also helps them focus their energies and resources on other vital components of their marketing mix.

Most Australian business owners are very glad to discover how much money they can save by offshore outsourcing their outbound call centre processes.  The savings ranges anywhere from 30-60%.  Based on on-shore labor rates, it’s very easy to spend $5000 a month or more on call centre agent compensation.  But when you can save 50% or more of that amount simply by letting somebody else in the Philippines do it, it’s worth considering.

One question a lot of clients new to the offshore outsourcing model often ask is, “What about the language ability of these operators?”  The answer is that, to be honest, there is some drop-off in language efficiency.  But the good news is that you can afford to let your outbound call centre make a lot more calls and have a lot more agents and the net increase in ROI is very positive.

The reality of the matter is that even when you use ‘on-shore’ outbound call centre agents, they don’t always speak the best English.  Every country has regional differences in accents. While it’s the responsibility of the outbound call centre management to minimize that factor by careful hiring, still, some agents even on-shore can be hard to understand.  They usually don’t last very long though.

Australian companies use the outbound call centre process for a variety of purposes.  Probably foremost is outbound telemarketing (or ‘telesales’ as the Brits and Aussies call it).  Experience has shown that if an outbound telesales offer is structured correctly, i.e. specifically for non native-English speakers, it can be very effective.  There are very few products or services that haven’t been successfully sold via outbound call centre personnel.

Of course the best way to find out if an outbound call centre process will work for your company is to give it a try.  Most companies will run a ‘test run’ over a period of 2-4 weeks for you with 2-4 agents.  Based on the results of that test project, you can decide whether you want to ramp your campaign up with more agents, or stay in the tweaking phase, or just forget about the idea completely.

But you can be sure one thing:  Your competition is using or will soon be using offshore outsourced outbound call centre agents.