US call center solutions provider opens SE Asia HQ in RP

American call center solutions provider Five9 Inc. opened its Southeast Asian headquarters in Makati City recently, bringing to the country a comprehensive technology platform for a hosted contact center system.

Tim Keefe, Five9 vice president for international business development, said the choice of the Philippines as the hub of its operations in Southeast Asia will enable the country to realize its potential as one of the leading providers of customer care in the region.

Five9 offers hosted contact center solutions for interaction management, including its award-winning Five9 Virtual Contact Center (VCC), a fully hosted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) contact center system which enables companies to build contact centers without large capital investment.

Keefe said that for as low as P200,000, small companies can set up a one-seat call center and scale it up to more seats as the business grows.

"With Five9 VCC, any company can rent contact center functionality over broadband Internet within just five days," Keefe said.

"No upfront capital expense, no expensive infrastructure, no additional phone lines, no IT staff and no special software and hardware required," he added.

Five9 Philippines Inc., which will be headed by its newly appointed country manager Artemio "Junie" Pama Jr., claims it can establish new call center operations in two days and add new seats in less than one day in any location where there is broadband Internet connection.

This, Keefe added, would be most useful for the Philippines, which seeks to establish call centers throughout the country.

Five9 VCC is currently used by over 4,000 agents worldwide, including call center outsourcers, fund-raisers, and companies engaged in financial services, telemarketing, healthcare, home improvement, travel and other high-tech industries.

Keefe noted that approximately 400,000 Filipino students graduate from college annually and given the proper training, can man contact centers, especially in the provinces.

The Philippines currently competes with India and Canada as the center of the $100-billion global customer care and business process outsourcing industry.

Traditionally, setting up a call center requires huge capital investment and to justify the start-up cost, a company has to set up at least 300 seats to recoup its investment.

But with the Five9 solution, small- to medium-sized enterprises and branches of large organizations need not infuse huge capital to put up their own call centers.

"We are not just selling a product, we are selling a relationship," said Keefe.

Thus, Five9 Philippines is also setting up a Center of Excellence to serve as a training site for small and start-up call center operators not just in the Philippines but in other Southeast Asian countries.

Five9 also has plans to set up shop in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Australia.

Keefe said the company envisions these small call centers to provide very focused customer support for customers in North America.