From a hyper-growth phase, the country’s contact center industry is consolidating after the global economic crisis hammered small companies hauling in revenues below $10 million per annum.

While the sector is “resilient”, the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), which accounts for 80 per cent of the domestic industry, expects to see more mergers and consolidations next year.

Indeed, the crisis forced call centers to reduce their costs and deal with contracting revenues, Commission on Information, Communications and Technology (CICT) Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua pointed out. “But the Philippines still came out on top.”

Still, he underscored the need to spread the growth to new wave cities Iloilo, Metro Laguna, Metro Cavite, Davao, Bacolod, Pampanga Central, Bulacan Central, Cagayan de Oro, Bulacan South and Lipa - where operating costs will be much cheaper than Metro Manila.

Without doubt, the Philippine call centers are competitive in terms of quality of service but they still need to have an edge in terms of price points, CCAP officials acknowledged.

Just the other night, CCAP released the first of its four-part quarterly business survey where 31 of its more than 60 members participated.

Started in March, this year, the survey covered respondents, with a combined revenue of US$1.1 billion, representing a sampling of 90,000 seats of the 275,000 seats in the Philippines.

A handful of the companies surveyed registered a minimum revenue of $100 million per annum. The respondents catered mostly to the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Overall, the survey confirmed that small contact centers were the hardest hit by the downturn, though the total number of seats in the country still grew 14 per cent and the number of agents likewise increased 13.2 percent. In the 3rd quarter of 2009, local call centers posted a 15 percent growth rate, according to CCAP. This year, they also added a total of 45,000 seats.

Last year, the industry continued to grow 21 percent in terms of revenues last year and the number of seats went up 13.8 percent. Even then, it was obvious that smaller companies weakening operating margins will make mergers the best option for them to have economies of scale, according to the survey.

So far, the bulk of call centers, 66 percent, remain concentrated in Metro Manila, with 21 percent located in Makati; 13.5 percent in Quezon City and 11.3 percent in Pasig City. Cebu City has the most agents outside Metro Manila, with 11.8 percent.

Some 80 percent of contact centers serve the telecommunications industry. Other top industries served include the financial services, with 71 percent; technology, 52 percent and business services, 52 percent. The majority, 94 percent, handle inbound calls while 81 percent handle outbound calls and 77 percent, blended type calls.

The top 5 service types offered include complaints handling, account and product questions, help desk and technical support services, order taking and confirmation as well as telecollection. Notably, the improving agent to non-agent ratio shows better use of support staff.

The 2009 CCAP business survey findings showed that all contact centers offer services in English, with Filipino as the next most prominent language used. Some 23 percent of respondents offer services in Spanish for inbound calls; 15 percent offer French and 12 percent offer Mandarin Chinese for inbound calls.

However, while demand for call centers offering services in Spanish and Chinese abound, “We don’t have critical mass in other languages,” CCAP officials noted.

The CCAP survey was meant to establish useful starting operational and financial benchmarks. Succeeding surveys will have to capture other metrics so that industry efforts to move up the value chain and improve employee retention and recruitment can be measured and evaluated.