TESDA - The Technical Education and Skills Development Agency - is offering free 200 hour courses in English at many of its colleges around the country. My wife found out about this and tells me that here in Davao, the course lasts 10 weeks with 4 hours per day tuition and there is an examination at the end. Those who complete the course are pretty much guaranteed a job at a call centre. So I guess the emphasis is good clear diction, accent-less pronunciation and correct grammar.
So, basically they are creating their own pool of english speaking canditates for vacancies. It must pay out in the long run, then.
There is apparently a shortage of (more or less) fluent English speakers and, so I'm told, it's not exactly a longterm career choice for many.
Its a big problem not only in call centers but generally as the English level isn't high enough in country. Its good that its being recognised that something needs done but at the same time they should be pushing it more at school level.
Depends what they are doing my guys do more support services these days rather than telemarketing. Data entry, processing and cleansing as well as work that is more relevant to surveyors. As well as video making, transcription, blog writing and most recently doing comping (Competition entries).
Mahang after seeing what goes on I can understand why so many people sound stupid on the phone. There is very little going on as per product knowledge, people told to follow scripts and a lot of the stuff in the Philippines is about pushing the price down which eventually means getting the lowest cost workers possible. I am not sure where the call center industry is heading as its "clients" are destroying the industry not customers. But then again where is customer service generally these days?
