Philippine BPO group pushes back on US plan to bring call center jobs home

Major business groups representing the Philippine outsourcing sector have pushed back against a US plan to bring customer service jobs back home, arguing that the proposed rules unfairly target legitimate offshore operations without proof that they are causing consumer issues.

In a position paper dated May 18, the business groups told the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that the proposed measures would have substantial operational and economic consequences without clear consumer benefit.

"Proposals to limit the percentage of customer service calls handled offshore would impose arbitrary constraints on how companies allocate resources," the position paper read.

"Customer service operations are designed to route calls based on skill, availability, and efficiency. Artificial geographic caps would reduce flexibility, increase costs, and potentially degrade service quality," it added.

The comments were filed by the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (AmCham), and the US-ASEAN Business Council (USABC).

This comes as the FCC in March released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking to explore measures to encourage businesses to bring call center jobs back to the United States and improve customer service at existing US-based facilities.

According to Chairman Brendan Carr, Americans get "frustrated" when they call American businesses and end up connecting with an overseas call center as this has often meant "confusing service, delayed support, and even security risks."

Carr also noted that there have been cases where would-be scammers are trained at legitimate call centers and access client data illegally, or take their training to a foreign robocall operation.

"Philippine-based providers' experience, including providers supporting public-sector emergency and hotline services, further confirms that legitimate enterprise contact-center operations in the Philippines are not the source of unlawful robocall traffic," the Philippine business groups said.

"These operations function within authorized client workflows, monitored channels, and auditable systems; they do not independently initiate, route, spoof, or control mass robocall campaigns," they said.

The groups also noted that American companies generally do not permit offshore providers to operate under lower standards, and they are typically subject to the same scripts and workflows, customer-experience standards, audit requirements, cybersecurity controls, escalation procedures, and contractual performance obligations as their US-based counterparts.

"For many providers, failure to meet these standards results in contractual penalties, financial clawbacks, mandatory remediation obligations, or termination of vendor relationships," the position paper read.

"These operational realities are important because they demonstrate that customer outcomes are primarily determined by governance, training, supervision, tooling, and accountability, not by geographic location alone," it added.

The business groups also noted that the proposals to limit the percentage of customer calls handled offshore would have substantial operational and economic consequences without clear consumer benefit.

"US companies have retained offshore components of their customer-service models precisely because integrated global delivery allows them to preserve cost efficiency, continuity, surge capacity, specialized talent access, and service quality for US consumers," they said. — VDV, GMA News