Ex-agent becomes own boss after stint with BPO giants

CEBU, Philippines – After eight years of learning the ropes in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry, a call center agent decided to become his own boss by opening his very own call center company.

Michael Cubos, 32, founded Performance 360 Solutions Inc. in Davao and Performance 360 Global Services in the municipality of Cordova in Mactan Island.

With an initial investment of P10,000, Cubos started his little outsourcing firm in Consolacion, Cebu in 2012. After working with several multinational contact centers in Cebu from 2003 to 2011, he felt he was already well equipped with the experience and skills to run his own company.

Cubos said after working with the BPO giants such as Sykes Asia, Lexmark Shared Services, TeleTech, Concentrix, Stream, and several others, he somehow developed a number of specialized skills and learning that inspired him to start his own.

While working as a call center agent, Cubos also took advantage of his extra time to do side-line works through online broker portal formerly known as oDesk (now Upwork). From there, he created a good name online and gained the trust of clients.

Equipped with call center skills, from technical support, customer services, and other specialized outsourcing expertise, and good relationship with foreign clients, Cubos rented an Internet Cafe in Consolacion, converted the Internet Cafe to 10-seat call center after the Internet Cafe closes from 12 midnight to six in the morning.

Cubos’ prowess to please his foreign clients — sdelivering jobs on time and paying his 10 agents rightfully, brought him to bigger opportunities a year later, when a relative in Davao offered to join his business as partner to set up an 80-seat call center.

Performance 360 Solutions Inc., opened in Davao in 2013, followed shortly by the opening of the 130-seat capacity call center on Cordova, Mactan Island.

Cubos’ company is the first call center in Cordova, which officially opened in November last year manned mostly by local residents.

Davao is now handling four international accounts, while Cebu is maintaining three clients, focusing mostly in providing sales and marketing and customer service jobs.

According to Cubos, while the outsourcing is now largely dominated by bigger players, handling bigger accounts, there is also an opportunity for Filipinos to set its small and medium sized call center, as SMEs from all over the world are also looking for smaller outsourcing firms that could easily meet their budget requirements.

Cubos believes that the lucrative outsourcing sector does not only offer opportunities for employment, but also paves way for Filipinos to start their own outsourcing business.

As the company is getting more clients, Cubos said Performance 360 recently opened a business development and collection office in Philadelphia, USA.

Cubos is an awardee of The Outstanding Cebuano Award (TOCA) in the field of Entrepreneurship to be given on August 20, 2016.

Source: http://goo.gl/E4omOs