MANILA, Philippines -- Call centers in the Philippines are turning into "profit centers" as customers continue to outsource higher-value services.

The local call center industry is estimated to have a total capacity of nearly 130,000 seats, according to industry tracker Callcentres.net.

In terms of size, the Philippines is still smaller compared to Australia (200,000 seats) and the United States (3 million seats).

But the Philippines is forecasted to grow by nearly 25 percent in the next 12 months, significantly higher than Australia (3 percent) and the US (negative 3 percent).

The data indicates further offshoring activities or migration of call center jobs from the US, more so in the country than in Australia.

"The Philippines has a larger proportion of profit centers," said William Dieu, senior research analyst for Sydney-based Callcentres.net.

"There is a larger proportion of call centers here that have up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, and we expect that to increase in the next few years," Dieu said in his presentation at the ongoing Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) conference.

This means customers are not only looking to offshore call center work to save on costs but making customer service a revenue-generating channel. For service providers, this involves diversifying into non-voice support services.

Dan Reyes, CCAP director, noted that a lot of customers today are migrating support for premium clients from the US to the Philippines.

"Initially, customers decided to offshore (to the Philippines) for cost-efficiency," noted Reyes, who is also director for Sitel Philippines.

"But as the quality of service becomes higher, there is a significant amount of trust from them to offshore a lot more and this speaks a lot about the call center industry today," he added.