Contact center firms are warned against granting unsustainable salary rates to workers as this would only discourage companies to outsource here and put the domestic jobs generation in peril.

This warning came from Senator Mar Roxas, the father of the call center industry, in a keynote speech at yesterday’s opening of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) Annual Call Center Conference & Expo 2009.

“We should not price ourselves out of the market because if we give the reputation that we are no longer providing value for money proposition then investors will stop coming here and put hundreds of jobs in peril,” Roxas told the conference packed with industry players and actitioners.

Roxas noted a rise in the cost of manpower by 20 to 30 percent in the last few years making call center agents, mostly newly college graduates highly paid with salaries of P15,000 to P20,000 from the P12,000 previously.

“This a challenge for the industry and the country,” Roxas said.

To help temper the rise in unsustainable salary rate hike, Roxas has emphasized the need to help improve education to improve the manpower pool to moderate the rate increase.

Based on the CCAP’s latest data, the industry’s acceptance rate has improved to 5 percent from 8 percent because of the implementation of the pre-employent language training of the government and the private sector.

This has also resulted in a steady agent’s attrition rate at 54 percent instead of the projected 60 percent.

CCAP president Benedict Hernandez said that a salary inflation survey by Watson Wyatt showed that a 10 percent increase year on year in the salary rates of industry workers.

“We absorb all these inflation year on year and allow escalation in cost but this annual increase is not sustainable,” Hernandez said.