Customer operations at depth. Support, order issues, returns, disputes and live chat, with strong English and long experience serving US, UK and Australian consumers.
Catalogue, merchandising and content operations. Product data, listings, imagery coordination and marketplace management, which is high volume detail work where accuracy compounds.
Performance marketing execution. Campaign management, feed management, marketplace advertising and reporting.
Operations and supplier coordination, including purchase order administration and logistics follow up.
Also common: experience with the mainstream commerce platforms and marketplaces rather than familiarity in principle.
Market Guides
Hiring in the Philippines for e-commerce and direct-to-consumer companies
In short
E-commerce companies hire in the Philippines primarily for customer operations, catalogue and merchandising work, and performance marketing. The factor that shapes everything is seasonality: peak trading periods require coverage that permanent headcount alone rarely justifies, and employment in the Philippines does not flex easily.
E-commerce is one of the most common reasons companies look at the Philippines, and one where the obvious answer, hire support staff, is usually only part of what actually helps.
What the market supplies well
Coverage hours are the real design question
Consumer support is not asynchronous. Someone has to be there when customers are.
For Australian and Singapore based businesses the Philippines covers the trading day with no accommodation at all. For UK businesses a shifted Manila start gives strong overlap. For US businesses, covering US consumer hours means evening or night work in Manila.
Night work carries a statutory differential of at least 10 percent for hours between 10pm and 6am, and it is the largest driver of attrition in support teams. Decide the roster before the job description, and rotate the burden rather than allocating it permanently to the same people.
For Australian and Singapore based businesses the Philippines covers the trading day with no accommodation at all. For UK businesses a shifted Manila start gives strong overlap. For US businesses, covering US consumer hours means evening or night work in Manila.
Night work carries a statutory differential of at least 10 percent for hours between 10pm and 6am, and it is the largest driver of attrition in support teams. Decide the roster before the job description, and rotate the burden rather than allocating it permanently to the same people.
The seasonality problem, stated honestly
Peak trading generates support volume that permanent headcount cannot justify year round, and Philippine employment does not flex the way seasonal staffing does in some markets.
Security of tenure applies. Employment cannot be ended because the season finished, and using fixed term or contractor arrangements to work around that is exactly the structure that gets reassessed as employment when it is tested. The four fold test looks at how the relationship actually operates, not what the agreement is called.
The workable approaches are structural rather than contractual. Build the permanent team to sustainable volume and buy peak capacity as a service from a provider that carries its own employment. Or hire for the peak and give the team meaningful non support work in quieter months, which usually means catalogue, content or process improvement. Both are legitimate. The one that is not is a permanent role dressed as a temporary one.
Security of tenure applies. Employment cannot be ended because the season finished, and using fixed term or contractor arrangements to work around that is exactly the structure that gets reassessed as employment when it is tested. The four fold test looks at how the relationship actually operates, not what the agreement is called.
The workable approaches are structural rather than contractual. Build the permanent team to sustainable volume and buy peak capacity as a service from a provider that carries its own employment. Or hire for the peak and give the team meaningful non support work in quieter months, which usually means catalogue, content or process improvement. Both are legitimate. The one that is not is a permanent role dressed as a temporary one.
Where e-commerce companies under-hire
Support is hired first because the pain is loudest. The role that is frequently deferred and produces more compounding value is operations: the person who reduces the volume of contacts rather than answering them.
Refund policy clarity, listing accuracy, delivery communication and returns process design remove the causes of contacts. A company that hires 4 support agents and no operations capability keeps adding agents.
The same applies to catalogue quality, which affects conversion and returns simultaneously and is rarely anybody's job.
Refund policy clarity, listing accuracy, delivery communication and returns process design remove the causes of contacts. A company that hires 4 support agents and no operations capability keeps adding agents.
The same applies to catalogue quality, which affects conversion and returns simultaneously and is rarely anybody's job.
What to plan for
Statutory employer costs of roughly 11 to 16 percent depending on seniority, falling as salary rises because the main contributions cap out.
Roster decisions before job descriptions, because the shift determines who applies and who stays.
A view on peak capacity that does not rely on being able to reduce headcount afterwards.
And a realistic assessment of whether the constraint is people answering contacts or the reasons contacts happen.
Roster decisions before job descriptions, because the shift determines who applies and who stays.
A view on peak capacity that does not rely on being able to reduce headcount afterwards.
And a realistic assessment of whether the constraint is people answering contacts or the reasons contacts happen.
Hiring in the Philippines?
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