MANILA, Philippines--Rather than treating each other as competitors, call centers in the Philippines can start looking at Malaysia as a possible expansion site, according to an analyst from Frost and Sullivan

Shivanu Shukla, Frost and Sullivan industry manager for ICT practice in the Asia Pacific region, believes the Philippines is already years ahead of Malaysia which only recently began marketing itself as a call center hub.

Shukla said the Philippines already has a niche in high-end customer services and call center operators present here, whether local or multinational, are slowly moving to non-voice services.

Local operators, he said, can migrate low-level customer support services to Malaysia and concentrate Philippine operations on doing high-value processes.

"It is exactly what the Indians have been doing by investing in the Philippines. The next phase for operators here is organic growth," Shukla said in an interview with INQUIRER.net during a recent visit to Manila.

As the Philippines becomes a more mature market, expanding overseas allows local operators to leverage on Malaysia to leverage on available capacity while developing the local workforce for more advanced services like knowledge processs outsourcing or KPO .

"Pureplay" call center services (or predominantly voice-based customer support) is now a losing proposition, said Shukla. The market is still growing but the margins are getting smaller.

"Indian companies, for example, are refusing purely voice deals and adding more services such as process automation and customer analytics," Shukla said.

Expanding into Malaysia also fits the current industry trend among customers. "In the end, clients are going for the distributed model and not putting all their eggs in one basket," Shukla said.