Call centers’ hang-up: English skills

By Carlos H. Conde
Published: November 20, 2006

DAVAO CITY, Philippines: Two years ago, Angeli Boteros spoke English like an American teenager. A lifetime of watching American television and movies left her sentences peppered with the trademark phrases of American youth, including “like” and “you know.”

Like many young Filipinos, Boteros, 26, is so steeped in American pop culture, and has such a good accent, that on the phone, she could pass herself off as a girl from California.

Over the past year, she has been doing exactly that. As a call-center agent at GCom, Boteros helps customers half a world away with problems with their purchased products or services.

“My friends used to tease me because of the way I speak English,” Boteros said at a café in this booming southern Philippine city. “Not anymore.”

Davao City is one of several areas outside Manila where call-center companies have been venturing to take advantage of the low labor costs and excess manpower in the provinces.

But there has been concern lately that the industry’s growth may be limited by the deterioration of its main advantage: the English proficiency of the work force. According to a study by the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, 75 percent of the more than 400,000 Filipino students that graduate from college each year have “sub-standard English skills.”

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