Hi, I'm Yong
20+ years across contact centers, CRM and Microsoft Business Applications. Today I lead Customer Success & Growth at an AI filmmaking company. After hours I build websites and write a Filipino fantasy series for young readers.
01 · About
I started in 2003 as a team supervisor on a BPO floor, and I've been fixing how customers get helped ever since.
Along the way I ran a ~700-person banking operation at HSBC, handled executive escalations at NetSuite, spent nine years running global business systems across five countries at Fonality, then moved into the Microsoft world: Hitachi Solutions, Microsoft Philippines, and back to Hitachi as Associate Director of Presales for APAC and ANZ.
The common thread is translation. I take what a customer actually needs, turn it into something an engineer can build, and stay close until it works in real life. These days AI is part of that toolkit: I use Claude every day, and when the output is wrong I trace it back to the instructions, the context or the data.
Outside work I'm a builder at heart. I make websites under YC Creatives, and I'm writing a fantasy series inspired by the stories my mother told me.
I learned on the floor that every metric is really a person waiting on the other end.
If a team does something by hand every week, I'll try to automate it, document it, or both.
I use AI for real work, and I check its output before anyone relies on it.
Philippine folklore, a boy whose palm glows, and cats who remember everything.
Off the clock
The things that keep me sane, strong and very busy outside of work.
Nineteen rescues share my home. It's loud and full of fur, and I wouldn't trade it.
These days you'll find me on my entry-level gravel bike (pun intended), exploring the back roads of Pampanga and Tarlac.
I love lifting as much as I love riding. It's my reset button, and where a lot of my best ideas show up.
02 · What I do
Different hats, one habit: understand the problem properly, then build the simplest thing that solves it.
Account health, KPIs that mean something (adoption, CSAT, NPS, retention), recurring client reviews, and the escalation paths that catch at-risk accounts early.
Discovery, demos, RFPs and SOWs for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.
NetSuite, Dynamics 365, HubSpot, Zapier and Power Automate, set up so the process still holds after go-live, with the SOPs and training to back it up.
Websites, Shopify themes, decks and stories through my studio YC Creatives. Its motto: Ideas, made real.
03 · Projects
One is for the chef behind the original Dubai Chocolate. The other is for every kid who grew up hearing stories on rainy nights.
A new online home for the Dubai chef behind the original Dubai Chocolate, now sold at Dubai Duty Free. I moved the brand off an old WordPress site and onto a custom Shopify storefront, and designed, coded and set it up end to end.
Twin princes of a hidden sea-realm are separated at birth by an old and cruel law. One grows up a crown prince. The other, Isagani, grows up in Malate, Manila, raised by Hiraya Cruz, a repairwoman who is secretly the keeper of a hidden tide-gate.
Then Isagani wakes up with his palm glowing, and the dream of water he has every night turns out to be a door. Beneath both worlds waits the Bakunawa, the moon-eater, bound under seven seals: patient, singing to itself in the dark, and beginning to move.
No one who is truly loved is ever forgotten. Not by the Sea.The First Promise · the heart of the series
A boy from Manila learns why the Sea has been calling him, and who has been waiting on the other side.
In a mission on the Manila esteros, seven-year-old Santi hears a voice in the rain calling him by a name nobody living has ever said.
At a house of forty children by the bay, the lamp oil is cut by half "in the interest of economy", and eleven-year-old Liwliwa starts a new ledger headed LIGHT.
Books Four and Five are planned. Five books, one promise.
“Marapat sa gunitâ.”May the Sea remember you. · May we be worthy of remembrance.
Three books · written~280,000 wordsFive planned
Written for Lourdes, my mother, who first made me believe that stories have power.
An AI prospecting pipeline that finds organisations about to buy or expand a virtual production stage. Twice a week it reads the news, sorts real buyers from noise, then reads each buyer's own website for the decision-maker and a published email, never a guessed one. Every lead lands in the sales team's sheet with links to check it.
I built v1 and the buyer brief · v2 built with ReneAn AI-assisted workflow, built with ARwall's CEO, that gets the company through government-vendor registration and opportunity tracking. Claude does the first pass, and a person checks every output before it's used.
Government buyersMy small design and web studio. Websites, Shopify themes, mood boards and proposal decks for friends and small businesses. Ideas, made real.
Chef Nouel Catis is the latest client04 · Experience
Report to the CEO and own customer relationships and growth numbers. Set up the customer KPIs and review cadence, built GovPipe and Salespipe, and contributed to US$2.6M in new-customer wins.
Led Dynamics 365 CE and Power Platform presales across the region. Won PNB Life's Customer Service project and configured it myself through go-live.
Built value-based proposals with account teams and partners. Closed a US$800K public-education deal.
Configured Dynamics 365 service processes and Power Platform dashboards, then delivered training and go-live support.
Ran the global Systems & Processes team for nine years across five subsidiaries. Primary NetSuite admin, plus HubSpot, Marketo and Concur.
Service quality and staff utilization in a high-volume SaaS support operation, plus executive-level escalations.
Owned productivity, quality and P&L for ~700 people. Automated the ops scorecard and cut reporting effort by 80%.
Also: CRM Business Consultant at Enzumo (Australia, 2011–2016), Assistant Manager at Ignify (2010), and where it all started, Team Supervisor at PeopleSupport (2003–2006).