Eric: Welcome to the Contact Center Cactus Chat Podcast! I’m your host Eric Mulvin coming to you from sunny Phoenix, Arizona.
Jake: I’m your co-host Jake Cayang, from Dumaguete City, Philippines.
Eric: I’m a serial entrepreneur; started my first business 10 years ago. And 6 LLCs (Limited Liability Company) later I started Pac Biz Contact Center Outsourcing in 2015. Today, we have over 200 employees and growing.
Jake: And I’m the operations manager here in Pac Biz and I’ve been working with Eric since 2014 and I grew as the company grew.
Eric: So whether you’re looking to outsource for the first time; whether you manage a contact center or just looking to improve your customer experience we’ll be covering topics for you.
Jake: So business managers, operation managers, business owners this is for you so make sure to subscribe.
Eric: Welcome to our very first episode! This show is really for people who manage call centers, they are business owners or operation managers who are looking to outsource. Because you’re having trouble hiring, having trouble with training, the turnover, and you’re looking to fix that because you’re business isn’t growing or you’re looking to improve customer the experience, and you manage a call center and you’ve been stuck or y’know of some those things like that, right?Anything else Jake?
Jake: Yeah, just to give you an idea what it’s like, y’know, working for; to outsource to a call center and yeah most of the time the role of Pac Biz is to help the companies y’know to focus on something else not with the call center where they can grow their business.
Eric: So we’re excited to talk about this! We got tons of experience. Jake and I have been working together for almost 10 years running a call center. And so what I was thinking was for our very first episode or two I wanted to share the Pac Biz story with you guys coz I think every time I tell it to people they tell me: “this is an amazing story” and so I tell people individually; so I thought why not tell the world; do a podcast. The first episode or two is the Pac Biz story and how we came to be and how we existed and Jake is a huge part of that and so I’m going to have him share some of his side of the story and of course I am too.
So to [tell] the Pac Biz story I got to go back to elementary school, I was 5 years old, because everyone always asked me how did you get to start a call center or run a call center and have all these employees and that’s like so many people and so much to manage. Yes it is, but you know you don’t get there overnight you start when you’re 5.
My first business I started was a Lego city I built and not only did I build a Lego city, I charged my parents admission to look at the Lego city and so I had a whiteboard I even wrote; I even did dynamic pricing so if you came during the day time it was one price, if you came on nights and weekends it was another price. Where I got these ideas from I had no idea, looking back, I didn’t even know anything about dynamic pricing, but that was the very first business and for me, and it led to a series of businesses.
I had something called Kobe’s card shack in my backyard; bought and sold sports cards; right around the time Kobe Bryant was a rookie and so I actually have some pretty valuable Kobe Bryant rookie cards that I do not plan on doing anything with; because of that experience, but I have my business card, I made business cards, and this was like around 6th Grade, I went on to make CD mixes in high school, sold those when Napster first came out and when CD burners first came out and I made T-shirts; worked with a print shop in town and designed different T-shirts and sold them to all the people in high school and it was pretty good side money.
I think I was making like 50% margins on the shirts so not bad; there’s no overhead; it was just me; no warehouse or anything, things are a lot simpler when you’re just in high school but fast forward. I don’t want to tell you my whole life story but there’s a lot of interesting little businesses I started but the very first ‘true’ business is True Cap it’s a taxi business and so 10 years ago I took my last paycheck from my last job I was working at Yelp and I used it to get a loan for the very first taxi and so we got these red, bright red taxis.
We had free coffee and doughnuts if you were going to the airport in the morning before 9 AM. We had Verizon tablets in the back, you could watch Netflix, check your e-mail, watch YouTube, play music through the Bluetooth sound system. This is in 2012. Like Lyft and Uber, they were doing this stuff 3-4 years later but were doing it; we had the first taxi app in Arizona in 2012 and this little tiny company that had like 3 or 4 cabs at the time was trying to take Uber head on.
Jake: Yeah I remember those days. Yeah one of the drivers actually, you know, talked to me about Uber but there was no name; she just said you know what’s coming up, you know they’re contacting drivers, you know, how there’s something big coming up and yeah that’s where Uber was introduced to me; I mean, yeah, from a taxi driver that, you know, that felt threatened by that, you know, rumours and yeah it was really really true that it would really; it took over some part of the businesses and yeah, that’s one of the business that they took over, you know, was the company that we worked for.
Eric: Yeah, you know, and what’s interesting; maybe you don’t remember this Jake but you know when we started the taxi business, we were actually one of the first people in Arizona, probably in the country to work with Uber. At the time, they were only working with, like, limo companies and we started a; coz’ Pac Biz is like the 6th business I started so it wasn’t like taxi, Pac Biz. There were several series of businesses that led to the call center but the second business we started was a limo company. So we could pick people up at the airport so we had a Lincoln Navigator and it was like a 2005 Lincoln Navigator; this was like 2012-2013 so it was, like, almost 10 years old. Uber, they got really strict and they would have never would have accepted vehicles like that but at the time though, like, you have a working vehicle, come on in we’ll work with you.
So yeah crazy stuff so we did work with them and then they changed their; pivoting! We talked about that, you pivot, they pivoted big time! They went from working with limos and your, you get a black car like for my wedding in 2013, we used Uber to get a black car and we didn’t have to book a limo ahead of time; we just used that, it was great. But they went to private vehicles and the model of that they’re into today and that changed everything and that changed stuff, you know, for our industry, we had to get out of taxi, we were losing money and that’s actually how we started Pac Biz. Because we were working with another taxi company in town and when we were too busy we give them calls and so when I told them that: “hey, you know what we’re shutting down, this isn’t working.” He offered me a job and he also said: “well, what about your call center agents? They sound great. I’ve talked to them on the phone. Why don’t you bring them on to our office here in Phoenix and we’ll interview them and coz we could use some people in our office.” And that’s when I told them: “well, I’d love to,” but where are you Jake?
Jake: Yeah
Eric: Are you going to be able to hop on a plane to Phoenix to start a job? No, so.
Jake: And, yeah I can, you know, the way I imagine things, you know, it’s inevitable. This is the direction that we’re supposed to be going. You know the timing of Uber, at that time was, you know; that gave us an opportunity to evolve into another business and here we are now and yeah I mean what could have been if we continued with that taxi business? You know, who knows? You know, this is the direction where we’re supposed to go. Yeah this is, yeah I think we’re on the right path.
Eric: Yeah and that’s what we’re thinking too, like oh gosh, we own this taxi company , the cabs are falling apart. The drivers in the summer time here in Phoenix are struggling like this isn’t working. So coming up next; we’re getting close to wrapping up our first episode here, so coming up next week we’re going to talk about Pac Biz and the growth of Pac Biz and how we went from Jake and his like 3 coworkers; 3-4 coworkers to what we have today over 200 people so.
Jake: Yeah, yeah that’s interesting. I think
Eric: So.
Jake: Oh sorry,
Eric: Go ahead
Jake: Yeah it’s; you know the growth of the company as well as the growth of the clients we have, you know, there will be a lot of stories we can tell and you know stay tuned for the next episodes.
Eric: Yeah I’m excited coz’ Pac Biz is an awesome story of, you know, amazing amazing talented people, personal growth and our core values. So I will see you guys next week. Thank you for listening to The Contact Center Cactus Chat. I’m, again, Eric Mulvin.
Jake: And this is Jake Cayang.
Eric: Alright, we’ll see you next week.