CEBU CITY, Philippines, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- The Philippines has surpassed India as a hub of call-center jobs, an industry group says.
In Cebu City, help-wanted ads proliferate at I.T. Park, an outpost of call centers and restaurants and clubs serving their workers, USA Today reports.
The Philippines now employs 350,000 people in call centers compared with India's 330,000, says the Contact Center Association of the Philippines. The group estimates Philippine call centers produced $6.3 billion in revenue last year and says that the figure will grow 15 to 20 percent annually.
"It's a bit of a coming-out party, because the Philippines has been undermarketed," said John McCarthy, an outsourcing expert at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. "Clearly, the Philippines has become the preferred location for companies serving Americans."
U.S. consumers increasingly are being routed to the Philippines when they call their bank, insurer or computer company, even if they don't know it.
"The thing that the Philippines excels in is that they have the most accent-neutral language," said Kevin Campbell, an executive of Accenture, which has more than 20,000 employees in the Philippines.
