Smart re-packages mobile Net cafes into call centers
By Jenalyn M. Rubio
CW Reporter September 19, 2006

Smart Communications Inc. has announced plans to convert its mobile Internet cafes—housed in 40-foot container vans—and double as call centers by night.

The telecom operator announced Tuesday a partnership with Five9 Philippines Inc., a provider of Web-based contact center solutions, to help transform the company's ‘Smart Click' cafés into contact centers. Under the agreement, Five9 will provide Smart Click cafes with its Virtual Call Center software.

According to Tina Mariano, head of Smart's public access group, the program will run under a franchise model. For an initial capital of P325, 000, franchisees will be shipped a container van containing 15 Internet-ready PCs. The package comes with technical support from Smart.

Artemio Pama, Five9 Philippines country manager, estimates that it would cost about P600,000 to P800, 000 a month to operate a café-cum-call center including software licenses, employee salaries and other maintenance fees.

“But you could eventually earn as much as PhP 1.2 to PhP 1.3 million a month so we're talking about an ROI (return on investment) of around 35 percent,” Pama said.

There currently are 19 Smart Click cafés located in provinces including Bulacan, Samar, Leyte, Zamboanga, Catanduanes, Aurora , Batanes, among others.

Describing these areas as more or less “virgin communities” where there are almost no means to connect to the Internet, Smart's Mariano said these are the areas the company wants to focus on in order to generate new business opportunities and employment.

Over the long-term, Smart aims to roll out at least a thousand Smart Click cafes nationwide. According to Mariano, 31 more cafes will be rolled by the end of the year and 200 more by next year.

She, however, clarified that not all Smart Click cafés will be transformed into contact centers, depending on whether franchisees decide to pursue the business or simply because there are not enough qualified agents or clients willing to locate services.

“But you would be surprised how many investors are interested,” said Five9's Pama, adding that almost 60 percent of the client leads they get are interested in the countryside, especially because most provinces really tend to meet the requirements of investors.

Five9 also announced that it has started a global “leads generation” program through which they would be referring possible clients to the Smart Click franchisees.

Five9 chief executive officer Brian Silverman said its clients are very happy with the services that the Philippine subsidiary provides so it will not be difficult to encourage more clients to invest.

“The Philippines is, in fact, our fastest-growing subsidiary contributing to 15 percent of our overall revenue and growing at 15 to 20 percent a month,” he added.