“We believe in the talent of the Kapampangans. We know that when they get into something, their resiliency level is very high,” said Annie Pineda, VP and Site Head, minutes before the formal opening on Friday.
Kaushal Mehta, founder and CEO, said at this modern times, everything happens online. “You purchase an airline ticket online or you buy something through an auction online or you sell something online. Now, when you do it online, you don’t have a physical store or a reservation agency, so if you have questions, what do you do?”
“You write an email or chat or pick up the phone or I want to change my flight reservation or my flight was cancelled. What do I do? So the people behind that is Motif,” explained Mehta.
“We do high level (level 3) travel reservation changes and ticketing. We do customer support, chat support or when people have question for billing or refund also electronics online when you’re trying to buy something, pre-sales questions, wholesale support,” he added.
For Pineda: “Pampanga has good talents a lot of unharnessed talent that we hope we will be able to tap as we round up to the levels that we have seen the company level up in the future.”
This is the second Motif site in the Philippines with the first one located at Eastwood in Manila where some 500 call center agents are currently employed. The company has two sites in Ahmedabad, India.
Pineda said Motif, which actually started operations here on May 23, deals with online travel and online retail as well as electronic shops but generally customer service and fraud detection. “We’re starting off by servicing the US market with only one shift now,” she said.
Overall, Motif has clients in the US and UK with mostly Fortune 500 companies, she added.
“So far our pilot batches here have turned out to be really good in fact their doing great in terms of quality and they have been in the program for only a few months but I think they’re giving Manila a run for the scores on quality now,” she said.
Motif has initially 30 employees here but, “we plan to increase to about 85 employees,” she added.
“We choose the ground floor because when we grow, we can choose a bigger site and this becomes later on our HR and Admin as well as a showroom,” Pineda said.
The Motif VP, a Kapampangan herself from Tarlac City, said Kapampangans’ “behavioral dimensions when it comes to valuing work, being hard working, their focus and loyalty,” is also a factor why Motif chose to locate in Clark.
For Mehta, “having two sites helps us in our business continuity plan (BCP) because we are in the business of customer support and because business cannot stop. Hence, having two locations in the Philippines helps us keep the business alive.”
Pineda said: “We plan to grow the business based on clients’ demands. Currently, we just received word that we may be increasing the number of people in Clark as early as now because our very first client in Clark actually is very happy with the results of the two initial batches.”
Why SM?
When asked why Motif chose SM, Mehta said: “We compared a lot of properties inside and outside. This (SM BPO center) is a BPO place. It allows us to scale as we grow. There is capacity here in this building and it is also accessible, open and secure for our employees’ safety because we will operate 24/7.”
SM executives led by SM City Clark mall manager Aaron Montenegro were on hand during the Motif inauguration.
Motif is the fifth BPO company at SM including Arvato, Convergys, Cloud Staff and IQOR.
Celebrity chef, Laudico Guevarra catered the sumptuous food for the event while Nayong Pilipino cultural dancers and an ensemble entertained the guests.
