State-owned ISP locates new call centre in Philippines

One of New Zealand's largest ISPs will locate a new new call centre in the Philippines.

Orcon is a fully-owned subsidiary of Kordia, a state-owned enterprise. It has around 100,000 customers, making one of the “big five” internet service providers.

Offshoring helplines has proved a disaster for some, notably Yellow.

But chief executive Scott Bartlett said he had no concerns over quality of service.

"We've been through a really rigorous process," Mr Bartlett told NBR.

"These people sound like Americans. They're highly educated." 

Staff at the Philipinnes call will handle general and non-technical queries.

Mr Bartlett said there would be no local job losses. The new call centre would come on top of Orcon’s existing New Zealand help desk operation. Cost-savings would help the ISP hire more staff in New Zealand.

There were no plans to send backoffice or other positions to Manila. Ninety percent of Orcon's 300 staff would remain in New Zealand.

Datacom facilitating
Wellington-based IT services firm Datacom, which operates across Australasia and Asia, is setting up the new Philippines call centre on Orcon’s behalf.

Mr Bartlett said Datacom - majority owned by NBR Rich Lister John Holdsworth - was completely focused on quality, and had proved itself handling offshored call centre work for Kiwi Online (Orcon's dial-up internet sub-brand).

While some had qualms about offshoring, Mr Bartlett said in terms of effectiveness handling customer queries it would be "fine, great." He added, "It's a lot better than no one answering the phone."

Mixed fortunes
New Zealand companies have had mixed fortunes off-shoring call centre work.   

Moving its 018 directory service to Manila proved disastrous for Yellow, which persisted with its offshoring despite ongoing problems with New Zealand place names and colloquialisms.

Vodafone NZ moved around 125 positions back to New Zealand after political instability in Egypt caused problems with a regional support desk that handled some of the phone company’s help calls.

TelstraClear took a charge last year for offshoring some call centre positions. Its parent company, Telstra, went in the other direction, moving some small business help desk positions back to Australia.

Telecom has moved both call centre and back office work to the Philippines in an operation that has generally gone smoothly – bar a 2010 incident that saw four Manila staff suspended over abusive texts to a customer - and has been praised by analysts for cutting costs.

Orcon's Filipino call centre will open in April.