Karen Anne Franco – CSR and Sales Specialist

Hi 🙂 I am Karen Anne Franco, born March 11, 1991, and grew up in a city in Bulacan.

My parents waited to have a child for five years after they got married – and that was me! Sadly, they were unable to have more children as my mother had a condition with her ovaries that they only discovered during the c-section when she gave birth to me.

Growing up as an only child, most people would think that I was spoiled, and got whatever I wanted. But they would be wrong! My parents raised me in a very simple way. Most of the things that I had are the things that I needed – more so than what I wanted. The only time that I got things that I wanted was on those occasions when my father came back from overseas where he worked (he was an OFW – Overseas Filipino Workers) while my mother raised me here.

Growing up, I was not a sociable type of person. I only spoke to people when they talked to me first. I had a tight circle of friends who I spoke with and they knew the real ‘me’.

When I was studying, I found it hard to interact with strangers, I guess because I am not that confident in myself. Growing up my mother would continually tell me how great I was, how pretty I am, how intelligent I am and how she sees me as a perfect individual… just as most mothers do. Unlike if you have siblings, I suppose, they will give you their most honest opinion of you! LOL You learn to roll with the punches and bounce back. You are also more exposed to banter and conversation. When I took up College in one of the Universities in Manila, things got a little bit harder for me interacting with new people. I only had 4 close friends by then when I was in first year, and as we all had different courses, we were in separate classes the next year. I felt alone even though other students still chatted to me. But there came a shift…

One time our Professor in an English subject provided an project that involved group activities. She assigned me to be one of the group leaders. The project went well which resulted in good grades for us. After that, I gained confidence as I experienced first-hand what I am capable of achieving.

Fast forward to 2010 and I had my own family – I gave birth to my eldest child – my daughter. I needed to find work to support her as I didn’t want to be dependent on my partner or my parents. I tried my luck by applying to a BPO company. At that time, the salary was higher than the minimum wage here in the Philippines. In 2011, I was hired by a company as a Customer Service Representative to cater for a Telco account in Australia… and I fell in love with the job!

Most of the BPO companies here in the Philippines cater for US accounts, so employees had to work a graveyard shift. Of course, this time frame is difficult, and that was why I was so lucky to be working with an Australian account as it offered day shift due to the 2-3 hours difference from our timezone. Another upside was the company office was not far from where I live. I made a lot of friends, and even though some of them left the company, we still keep in touch and sometimes get together. I learned a lot from that work. I provided a great service experience to our customers, making sure they were satisfied with how I assisted them. And all of this was reflected in the surveys that they gave me. In 2015, the billing account that we were handling was transitioned to a sales account. We were trained for the products and how we can offer them to our customers. As the site was doing so well, and a lot of sales were coming in, agents could no longer process their sales order at the same time as they are talking to customers. This was mainly due to there being a goal for the average handling time.

In 2016, I fell pregnant with my 2nd child and in the same year, was given the chance to process sales orders to support the agents with their admin tasks. I earned this opportunity due to my tenure with the company and my familiarity with the processes. This work continued right through to me giving birth to my youngest in 2018.

Now my family was bigger and I began to feel like I was missing valuable time with my kids. Since 2017, there has been a huge and extensive road construction from where I live through to where I work, due to the government’s project for the train’s railway. Going to and from work has become a struggle for me. The travel should only be 30 minutes to 1 hour – but nowadays, it is twice that on a good day and three times as long on any other day! Adding that travel time to my already 9 hours of work in the office – I was practically living at the company!

This has become the issue for me… I want to be a good provider for my family and have enough time and energy left at the end of the day to actually spend it with them.

The answer: I’ve finally decided to work from home as a VA, ready to share my knowledge and my skills that I’ve earned from almost 8 years work experience with the same company.

You can be confident that you will have my loyalty once I’ve been given the opportunity to work with you. I’ll give it not just all of my hard work and effort, but my whole heart as well.

For a copy of Karens’s resume please click here.