According to industry forecasts, call centers will generate revenues of about US$2.5 billion this year, or a 60 percent growth from last year. Double digit growth is predicted at least until 2010 although it will gradually taper off.
Annual revenue growth will be at around 20 percent to 40 percent, predicts Raffy David, Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) director, saying that 'the size of the industry is large enough' and it will be difficult to replicate two-fold growth in the last four to five years.
But while growth may slow down, CCAP believes call centers remain an economic force as more operators begin moving into non-voice services such as transcription and back-office work.
PeopleSupport, for example, one of the largest operators, has expanded into transcription and 'captioning' services after recently acquiring U.S. service provider Rapidtext Inc.
By offering non-voice services, operators are trying to maximize day shifts since call centers operate primarily at night.
Revenue from non-voice segments is likewise predicted to grow; medical transcription companies, for example, are forecasted to grow by more than double this year although absolute is still a lot less than call centers.
'Whether or not the growth will be the same as call centers is a different matter,' said Bong Borja, president of PeopleSupport Philippines.
One constant thing that's growing is the demand for call center agents. According to industry reports, call centers employ some 112,000 workers in 2005 and will grow by at least 60 percent by the end of this year.
The figure is predicted to grow nearly four times as much by 2010. But according to CCAP, call centers hire only around 12,000 agents every year due to dwindling skill sets, not to mention high attrition rates which make for a non-sustainable labor supply.