Philippines Call Centers FAQ by Kiana Garcia:

Let's say that you are a foreigner looking to setup a customer service call center in the Philippines for your outsourcing needs. Where do you begin? Well first, location is the first consideration. You can't just plop down a call center wherever you feel like placing one. While most Filipinos speak Americanized English and know American culture, very few do it with the kind of clarity that you will require. Remember that you need to "fool" your Western callers into believing that they are speaking to someone from your own country when speaking to your Philippines call center agents. It's kind of unsettling to know that the person giving you directions to the local Applebee's has never set foot on American soil...much less your city. Therefore your only choice is one of the two largest cities in the Philippines, Manila, or Cebu. Up until recently, bandwidth and connectivity problems kept most call centers out of Cebu, opting instead for Metro-Manila, more specifically Makati, Ortigas, and now Manila/Malate. Obviously you can't have a reliable voice-over IP connection if your bandwidth provider can't deliver. All of this has changed, and now companies are slowly expanding their call center offices to Cebu.