German-American firm bullish on RP call centers

By Rose De La Cruz Updated March 02, 2009 12:00 AM

Photographers have a field day as Vice President Noli de Castro gets to experience how it is to be a call center agent during the grand opening of the Arvato Digital Services in Quezon City recently. Others in photo (from left) are Axel Kruse, Arvato CEO for North America, and Sabine Fessler, Arvato marketing manager.

MANILA, Philippines - It may be the worst of times for other industries. But for contact center companies, it is the best of times.

Why? Because when times are getting hard, the more you need to take care of your customers.

This is what’s propelling German-American company Arvato Digital Services, a global player in customer care, as it opened last week a state-of-the-art call center at the Eastwood Cyber Park in Quezon City.

No less than Vice President Noli de Castro led the opening rites for the 600-seat Arvato Call Center that will support Fortune 500 companies.

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Together with German Ambassador Christian-Ludwig Weber-Lortsch, De Castro got a first-hand view of the facility.

The facility has space for a call center three times its current size, and Arvato is already making plans for future expansion on the site.

Axel Kruse, Arvato’s CEO and President for North America, said the call center business in the Philippines will boom further as economic crisis spreads all over the world.

“Companies across industries are recognizing that the current global economic crisis requires them to increase emphasis on the quality of their customer care,” he said. “We made a strategic decision to open our new customer care center in the Philippines to not only tap into a great pool of expertise, but to enlarge our global footprint and equip our customers with even more flexibility. For us, the Philippines represent not just an ideal customer care location, but one of the most sensible areas in the world for conducting Business Process Outsourcing in general.”

Arvato maintains customer care expertise in a variety of industries, with emphasis on the banking and credit card sectors, as well as tourism and the management of customer loyalty and membership programs.

In this capacity, the company has maintained a long-standing relationship with Germany’s largest freight carrier. Consistently high levels of quality, flexibility, integrity and a complete focus on the customer have enabled Arvato to secure the trust of its clients worldwide, including some of America’s IT giants, large financial services companies and highly reputable travel agencies.

“We firmly believe the new Arvato facility in the Philippines sets the standard for superior customer care and our clients will immediately recognize the results of working with our experienced and highly-effective staff,” said Silke Beckmann, Arvato’s Vice President, Customer Care for North America.

“Working within the Arvato global network is a major boon to every Arvato client, as the company’s call centers are interlinked and can immediately support one another in emergency situations,” added Beckmann. “Arvato customer care centers have the unique advantage of offering a call center service embedded in a circle of other service offerings, such as financial, value-added services or e-commerce solutions. Therefore, Arvato cannot only provide front-end services, such as collecting all customer orders, but it can also handle back-end services, such as fulfillment, logistics and freight management services.”