‘Planted’ experts ensure firms’ clean social media image

Andrea Ayers

In this day and age when anyone and everyone with an Internet connection can easily air his opinion on virtually everything over the worldwide web, protecting brand image is a mean feat.

An unpleasant experience in a restaurant at noon can be posted on a blog or social networking site in a matter of minutes. Complaints about seemingly unresolvable gadget issues can make their rounds in forums and group mailing lists.

These online posts can work like negative advertisement for a company or brand. Such posts can ruin a company’s reputation and erode brand value if left unchecked. So what’s a company to do?

Business process outsourcing firm Convergys Corp. has the answer: Respond to such posts directly and at the soonest possible time. But how can that be done? The vastness of the worldwide web makes it virtually impossible to track every negative thing that is being said about a product or service.

Convergys president and chief operating officer for customer management Andrea Ayers explains that via a relatively new service that the company is offering, its clients can “plant” experts in online forums to immediately provide adequate responses to posted complaints.

“It works by inserting experts in blogs and forums to resolve issues in social media before they become more viral,” she explains.

The service was first offered in other Convergys sites overseas, but was also launched in the Philippine centers just this July.

This type of service, Ayers relates, is part of Convergys’ strategy to expand its range of offerings, in keeping with the changing times.

“Technology is becoming more important. We see the use of technologies picking up. The services we provide will become more complex, as people use more different technologies,” Ayers says. “Automation can handle some of these requirements, the simple things, while we will let our agents handle the more complicated things. We see people becoming increasingly demanding as well.”

Apart from the traditional voice services, Ayers says Convergys also provides a wide array of non-voice services, including e-mail and chat support, white mail processing, claims processing, servicing for the financial services industry, and some back-office services.

Site expansions

Marife Zamora

To complement the expansion of the services it offers out of its Philippine centers, Convergys is also increasing its footprint by opening new sites in various parts of the country.

The most recent addition to the Convergys Philippines network is the one within the Asiatown IT park in Cebu—its fourth facility in the province and its 15th in the country. Apart from this new site, the company also operates eight centers in Metro Manila, three in Cebu, and one each in Bacolod City, Sta. Rosa in Laguna, and Baguio City.

Marife Zamora, Convergys Philippines country manager and managing director for Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East, and Africa, relates that the new Cebu site will have 600 seats, the same number as its recently opened Baguio facility.

With these new site additions, she says Convergys’ employee count in the Philippines has now reached more than 25,000. By the end of the year, the company should employ around 30,000 people here, making it the biggest BPO service provider in terms of personnel.

Ayers says the Philippines is next to only the US in terms of size of operations. In the coming years, local operations are expected to grow even more.

“We’ve grown every year since we got here (eight years ago), and we see our operations here growing still. We continue to be a leader in the industry, and we continue to create opportunities for our teammates as we grow,” she says.

Growth path

Quashing the belief that a job in the BPO sector leads to a dead-end, Zamora relates that in Convergys, there are always opportunities for growth.

“High-performing agents go through a certification process to determine their readiness to be team leaders. They are given something like an on-the-job training where there’s computer and classroom training, as well as mentoring and coaching,” Zamora says.

Ayers adds that people from the various Convergys facilities worldwide are also given a chance to travel to other sites abroad to teach what will be deemed as best practices by the headquarters.

“It’s a good opportunity for us and our clients to learn from teams from different sites,” Ayers says, adding that teams from the Philippines have gone to Costa Rica, India, and Colombia, some on two-year assignments to train people in centers there.

Convergys’ facilities in the Philippines handle thousands of inbound calls daily for clients in the financial services, collections, retail, healthcare, and telecommunications industries, prompting local talents to develop their own methods in service provision. Some of these locally developed practices are now being used in Convergys sites overseas.

Zamora and Ayers agree that the Philippines has some of the best agents in the Convergys network, particularly in voice-based services, providing the company’s local operations more impetus for growth.

In the coming years, Ayers says Convergys will continue to ramp up its operations here, in line with its overall strategy to expand its services in keeping with the changing global business and technological landscapes.