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What Is A Call Center Business?

A call center is a centralized office in which inbound and outbound telephone calls from different customers (existing and new) are administered by a team of advisors, otherwise known as agents.

Typically, companies that operate on a large scale have call centers designed to handle phone calls in the areas of Customers’ information enquires, Customers’ service support, Telemarketing, and Conducting market research

A call center is like an open workspace for call center agents. It includes a work station with a computer system attached to each agent and a telephone headset connected to a telephone management system.

Different Types Of Call Center Agencies

In the modern-day organization, call centers make it convenient for organizations to easily solve customer problems and reduce their complaints. The call Centre procedure is usually to interact with the customer by answering their calls. In this way, the customers’ queries are resolved.

Call center agencies are different and can be run as an inbound call center, outbound call center, bilingual call center, and the Virtual call center.

• Inbound Call Centre-: Inbound call centers receive and deal with incoming calls on behalf of their clients. These calls are largely initiated by customers who seek particular information or the resolution of a particular problem or the other. An inbound call center agent handles such calls and deals with issues arising from the customer. But if however, the issue is beyond the agent, the problem can be forwarded to those technically qualified for handling such problems.

Usually, there are three essentials to an inbound call that agents handle:

Opening the conservation:  this happens when a call arrives and an agent picks the call; after the initial greetings, the agent will introduce themselves.

The body of the call: this is the stage the agent gives the customer undivided attention, understands the issue involved, and deals with it appropriately.

Closing the conservation: at the end of the main body of the call has been concluded, the agent will show some appreciation with a good-bye message.

 

• Outbound call Centre-: An outbound call center agent makes calls on behalf of their clients designed to promote sales, market the client’s products in a variety of ways including conducting market research.
• Dual Call Centre-: The call center agencies handle both inbound and outbound calls. They also use a telephone to market the client’s business including the promotion of sales, advertising the client’s products/services, and conducting market research.
• Bilingual Call Centres-: In situations where you have foreigners as part of your clients, to operate effectively, you need customer support for such customers. This type of call center agent would answer calls in several languages and to be able to do this effectively, you must engage the services of people who can speak the required languages fluently.
• Virtual Call Centre-: Call center agencies traditionally operate from offices where clients may easily access physically, whereas a virtual call center agency operates practically online. Businesses of this type of call center are strictly online based.
• Part-time Call Centre-: Whereas most call centers operate on a full-time basis, some clients may require that you work part-time since such clients don’t require your services on a full-time basis..
• In House Call Centre: This type of call center serves only one company and maybe set up by the company.
• Outsource Call Centre: This type of call center is run to deliver customer service to clients of other companies

The Structure of the Call Centre and Team Functions 

Call centers are made up of teams and structured around essential functions. These are some of the typical functions you would expect to find in a contact center

• Contact Centre Agent –The agent places outbound calls and answers contacts originating from the customers.
• Contact Centre Team Leader – The team leader takes care of issues the agents are unable to handle.
• Workforce Management Team –they do similar jobs such as the Human Resources personnel which comprises scheduling staff for duties, holidays, and booking staff for holidays.
• Quality Management Team – They make sure agents comply with the organization’s quality control by supervising interactions, recommending agents for training, providing notes, and providing information necessary for corrective action.
• Management Information Systems Team –This team is responsible for the preparation of dashboards, daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports of performance, including reports on call volume.
• Contact Centre Manager –The manager is the overall boss that is responsible for overseeing the management of the call center.

Differences Between Call Centre, Contact Centre, and Virtual Call Centre

With the development of interactive voice response (IVR) systems, the call center is now reputed for serving customers effectively. Meanwhile, the call centers were created to serve voice inbound and outbound calls, but these have been overtaken by events.

What we witness today is that technology has developed over time. As new technology developed, the call centers as we used to know it developed too. Now the call centers have developed to take care of interactions between customers and organizations the way we witness it today. The interactions we see today include email, webchat, social media, and other messaging. With these additions, what we used to be known as call centers have become contact centers and they became necessary to engage customers in their interactions with the organization.

Virtual contact centers are made up of individual advisors operating from their homes or smaller groups in different branch offices. All these advisors use the same cloud technology, working as one contact Centre, but from multiple sites.

Virtual call centers have been popularized in the industry and have acquired the reputation of attracting different types of advisors, with a good working environment and improved productivity.

Since it is possible that the customers would engage the organization via any of the channels, the centers need to be equipped to handle customers’ communication across the various touchpoints.

Types Of Calls That Take Place In A Contact Center

There are two types of calls that take place in a Contact Centre; they are:

• Outbound calls: these calls are initiated by the contact Centre staff to market company products, conduct market research, or collect company’s money or other queries such as a follow up to an inbound conversation. The outcome of outbound calls is usually unpredictable since they might be made at an inconvenient time by the customer.
• Inbound calls: these calls are initiated by the customer that wants to resolve an outstanding issue or make inquiries. Such calls should always be treated with alacrity and as effectively as possible. Since such calls come from the customer or potential customer, it provides the company/agency staff with a great opportunity to serve the customer uniquely.

Words & Phrases That Is More Effective In Customer Service Centre

When customers initiate a call, they are likely having one problem or the other that needs to be resolved; in which case they are making the call after having an awful experience. As a call/contact center, you should aim to address the issue with a positive experience and the words and phrases that should be handy always fall into the following:

• It’s so unfortunate that you have been treated in such a way – it is against our policy.
• I am only doing my job isn’t the appropriate phrase to use when things fall apart, there must be a way to pacify the customer.
• From our experience, I recommend this course of action.
• The word certainly appears more effective than the word yes

Outcomes that should guide all Customer Service Engagements

In every business, having a wide customer base is crucial to the success of the business, and serving these customers well makes business sense since it is cheaper to maintain existing customers than acquiring new ones. Besides, looking after customers most appropriately will likely increase the loyalty of your customers and by extension, your profit.

However, you can’t serve your customers at all cost because doing so (in terms of time and money) will certainly depress your profit, and it is a question of the time you will have to pack it up;  so how can you ensure you have drawn an appropriate line where it doesn’t make business sense to serve them..

We provide you with 3 upshots that should guide all your customer service interactions:

1. Customer-Centric - make sure that any process started to serve your customers have them in mind.
2. Business  Driven - always be an entrepreneur and work to ensure the utmost performance.
3. Results-Oriented - keep monitoring performance against the standard to ensure customers’ issues are resolved and that they are happy with the outcome.

The above 3 suggestions help ensure that you are addressing customers problems effectively, and in turn, their level of satisfaction is high enough to guarantee their loyalty

Equipment you will need to Start a Call Centre Agency

To start your call center agents, you will need the following equipment:

Computer-: You will need a desktop/laptop computer with window 10 or above and Microsoft word 10 or above; anti-virus and spyware protection.

Internet Connection (Broadband)-: You must have a fast internet connection that is always online. ..

Phone Service-: You will need a dedicated both land and GSM phones. You may be disallowed to use cell phones and VOIP services by some clients.

Telephone Headset-: This is important and you would need a headset that comes with a noise-masking microphone.

Skype-: Skype or similar facility may be preferred to communicate by some clients.

E-mail Account-: Email account is necessary as some of the messages may be in the form of email and you can open several email accounts as you choose to. .

Of course, you need a secure and conducive environment free of noise and other distractions. If you are going to be operating from home, then you should provide a room or enough space for it in a clean environment that is free from distractions. In addition to the equipment listed above, you may also need a couple of desks and desktop tables for computers and fax machines.

Measuring Contact Centers Performance

In other to serve customers in the best way possible, the contact centers performance will need to be scrutinized regularly to ensure quality service is dished out to customers. Different metrics can be applied to measure the quality of your call Centre task and quality of customer service.

The categories of Call Centre metrics can be broken down into three.

Historical – The historical metric provides information about the historical demand of the contact Centre which assists the team to extrapolate, make schedules and strategize for the future. Examples can be the number of calls received and treated and the average handling time

Real-time – This offers insight into the present-day demand of the Call Centre, which makes it possible to determine how to manage the daily demand of the Centre. Examples could be the service level lead time and the availability of the advisor.

Customer-focused – This lends an indication of how effective the advisor- customer interface is within the call Centre concerning the quality of conversation. Examples could be in terms of how a customer is satisfied, proper resolution of a customer complaint, and quality scores.

Technologies Applied By Call Centers

Call centers apply few technologies which are crucial to their operations. They include an IVR system, an ACD system, and headsets.

The interactive voice response (IVR) is the telephony technology that lets an automated system link with callers and assists in directing calls to the recipient through voice command. Without this technology communicating with various clients at the same time would not be possible.

An automated call distribution system (ACD) is a telephony device that answers and distributes incoming calls to a specific group of terminals or agents within an organization. – Wikipedia.  This technology is found in offices that handle large volumes of incoming calls and it is designed to distribute inbound calls to contact Centre agents.

The headset consists of a set of headphones, usually attached to a microphone, and used in most cases in telephony and radio communication. It is equivalent to a handset but with a hand free operation.

It is usually used in technical support and other customer service centers and permits customer service personnel to speak with a customer while busy imputing information into a computer. 

How to start a call center business

Learn and Research

If you are a newbie without prior knowledge of call center operations, you must attempt to acquire some knowledge on how to use the necessary call center tools before you can set up the business. This is very essential whether you are going to play a key role in running or managing the center, the necessary knowledge will put you in good stead when you start your call center.

You can learn the rudiments of the business by attaching yourself to an established call center business either as an employee or as a trainee with a proper agreement on the length of time it will take you to learn the trade. You must make sure you are attached to a professional who will put you through.

At graduation, you will have to study the industry to have an overview of how the industry works and who are the major competitors. You must understand the tricks of the trade, the profit level in the industry, the capital outlay, the setup cost, and the length of time required to break-even. All this information you can obtain from online searches or by launching a feasibility study. But without this basic information you can’t properly take off, otherwise, you are doomed to fail.

Develop a business plan

From the information gathered so far, you will be able to develop a business plan. The business plan will guide you to achieve your set goals. Whatever your goals may be – profit or not-for-profit, the business plan helps you not to miss out on any important part of the plan. For example, the plan may be geared towards highlighting the following issues that are key to your business success.

• The industry overview – which is how the industry operates, the rules and guidelines, the major competitors, the industry market value, the average levels of sales and profit, any barriers to entry, and the rules and regulations imposed by the state.
• Your areas of focus – since there are several areas in the call center business you can concentrate on, you must make your choice after researching the market/feasibility study. For example, you can focus on any one of the following:
• Inbound calls – where you handle incoming calls such as customers’ inquiries/complaints.
• Outbound call – where you initiate a call on behalf of your customers either to sell the company’s services/products or conduct market research.
• Dual call center – where you combine both inbound and outbound calls.
• Bilingual – where you have foreigners who speak a foreign language as part of your clients, and so on.
• Your marketing strategy –  how you are going to achieve your laid down goals in terms of pursuing aggressive marketing, intensive growth strategy, adopting penetration pricing, or expanding your service range.

Read Also: How to Write Feasibility Study Report for Small Business

Potential customers for your call center business

Your target audience hinges on e-commerce businesses, new fast-growing blue-chip businesses as well as multilevel marketing (MLM) businesses. The reason for new business inclusion as potential customers is that they are new and don’t have call centers yet. There is also the possibility that on-line stores are possible candidates to seek for business because they can command a lot of customers seeking answers to their enquires.

Moreover, freelancing websites provide tremendous prospects for call center agents. Though it can’t be argued that newbie faces tremendous challenges from well-established call center businesses since business owners would choose to engage call centers with good track records and a long period of on the job experience.

Craft your marketing strategy

In crafting your marketing strategy, you need to do the following:

1. Set out your goals

Your marketing strategy determines how to launch your call center business, grow it, and finally realize your business goals. Therefore it is important to spell out your goals beforehand and then set up your business center. The reasons for that are simple since your goals will determine the following:-

• The type of call center you will set up and the scale of it.
• The nature of the equipment you are going to use for your operations.
• The processes you will put in place
• The caliber and number of employees you will hire.
• Your initial capital outlay and where you are going to source for it.
• The form of business and the structure you will adopt.

For example, if your goal is to launch a big call center business and expand quickly, then you must be ready to deploy a large chunk of initial capital and seek clients across the board.

2. Establish your Budget

The cost of running a call center may be minimal but with great demand and challenge. But no matter how low the budget might seem, you will make provisions for the following:

3. Equipment is necessary to run a contact center.

• Business registration fees, insurance, permits, and licenses.
• Wages and salaries.
• .Website creation
• Marketing and sales
• High-speed internet

.So make sure you budget on the type of call center you propose to establish (inbound and/or outbound) and whether on-site call center or virtual business.

If you decide to go for an on-site call center, you will have to spend extra money on the following:

• Rent or lease for an office space
• Utilities such as electricity and water.
• Office equipment such as furniture and fittings.

Also, you must realize that if you decide to set up an outbound call center, your call center equipment is going to be different and if on the other hand, decide to combine the inbound and outbound call center you are going to use combined equipment.

4. Create Training Programs

Being successful in the call center business hinges on the level of training and marketing knowledge you put into it. For this reason, most call center businesses adopt a rigorous training program to make their agents excel when they interact with their customers.

The following areas are the areas it is expected the call center agents should have sound knowledge before they set a call center business:

• Good communication skills and be fluent with the use of spoken words to effectively pass on information to callers.
• Showing empathy when interacting with customers.
• Maintaining a high level of service and patience

Read Also: Developing A Marketing Strategy For Small Business

Conclusion: 

Call center business appears lucrative because of the way businesses prefer to sub-contract their call center operations. But setting up and running a call center business isn’t easy because of stiff competition in the industry and other challenges that are associated with the call center operation.

To establish a foothold and gain market share, you must set out your plan judiciously, doing the right thing at the right time by hiring the right personnel, using the right equipment and other tools, and applying good management skills. You should also apply the right metrics to monitor performance and apply corrective actions where necessary.

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